by Matt Haig
Nikolas felt a red flush of anger tingle his skin. ‘It was always magical. And I would rather a toy that was made with love, than one that cost a lot of money.’
‘But the only thing he ever made you was the sleigh. He was always too busy working.’
Nikolas thought of his old turnip-doll and wondered where it was. It wasn’t beside the door where he had left it.
‘Your father is a liar.’
‘No,’ said Nikolas. He had finished the soup but now felt extremely ill.
‘He promised you he’d come back. He told you that elves were real. Two lies, right there . . . Anyway, I’m tired now,’ said his aunt. ‘It’s time for my bed. So, now that you’ve finished your soup, if you can kindly get out of my sight that would make me as happy as the Queen of Finland. This is my house now. I am your guardian. So I’d start doing exactly what I say, exactly as I say it. Get out. Go.’
Nikolas stood up, his stomach aching. He looked around the room. ‘Where is my turnip-doll?’
Aunt Carlotta smiled. It was a proper smile, and one that was soon turning into a laugh. And then she said it.
‘You’ve just eaten him.’
‘What?’
It took a second. No. Two seconds. Maybe three. Three and a half. Actually, no. Just three. But then Nikolas realised what she had just said. His only toy in the world was now in his stomach.
He ran outside and threw up in the toilet hole.
‘Why did you do that?’ he asked, in disbelief, from outside. ‘My mum made me that!’
‘Well, she’s no longer here, is she?’ said Aunt Carlotta, through the small window which she had opened to get a better view of Nikolas being sick. ‘Thank the Lord. Used to give me a headache, listening to her bad singing all day. I just thought it was about time you should grow up and leave silly toys behind.’
Nikolas had finished. He went back inside. He thought of his mother. He thought of her holding onto the chain that held the bucket as she tried to escape the bear. How dare Aunt Carlotta say nasty things about her? There was only one option now. To run away. He could not stay here with Aunt Carlotta. He would prove his father wasn’t a liar, and there was only one way to do it.
‘Goodbye, Aunt Carlotta,’ he said, just a whisper, under his breath, but he meant it. He was going. He was going to find his father. He was going to see the elves. He was going to make everything all right.
A Very Short Chapter with a Long Title in which Not Very Much Happens
Aunt Carlotta mumbled some-thing and didn’t look back at him as she climbed into her bed with two mattresses.
Nikolas took some of the stale bread lying on the table, stuffed it in his pocket, and went outside, into the cold night. He was tired. His stomach still ached and his tongue tasted of rotten turnip but he was also something else – determined. Yes. He was going to start the walk to the Far North.
Miika was nibbling on a dry leaf.
The mouse, he supposed, was the closest thing he had to a friend.
‘I’m going to the Far North. It’ll be a very long and dangerous journey. There’s a very high chance of death. I think you should stay here, Miika. It’ll be warmer, but if you want to come with me, give me a signal.’
Miika looked, anxiously, at the door to the cottage.
‘You don’t have to stay right here,’ Nikolas told him. ‘You have the whole forest.’
Miika glanced at the whole forest. ‘But there’s no cheese in the forest.’
Nikolas still could not speak mouse, but got the general gist. ‘So you want to come with me?’
Miika perched on his hind legs and, though Nikolas couldn’t be entirely sure, it seemed that the mouse nodded his little head. And so he picked him up and put him in his left-hand coat pocket.
Then, with Miika peeking out at the road ahead, Nikolas turned and headed north through the trees, towards the place he thought he might find his father and the elves, and tried his hardest to believe in both.
The Old Lady
He walked all night and all of the next day. He looked out for the tall brown bear, and saw paw prints in the ground, but not the creature itself. He walked to the edge of the pine forest and followed the path around the banks of Lake Blitzen. The lake was so big and the water so pure and still, that it was a perfect mirror of the sky.
He travelled for days and nights. He spotted moose and, yes, on two occasions he did see more bears. Black bears. And once he had to climb a tree and wait an hour up in the branches for one of the bears to get bored and trudge away in the snow. He slept curled around the roots of trees, with Miika in his pocket or on the ground beside him. He lived on mushrooms and berries and fresh cool water.
He kept himself happy by singing Christmas tunes to himself, even though it was nowhere near Christmas, and weeing holes in the snow. He imagined being rich and waking up on Christmas Day, having all the toys in the toyshop. Then he imagined something far better – giving his father a horse and cart.
But all the time, as he walked, it grew colder. Sometimes his feet hurt. Sometimes he went hungry, but he was determined to keep going.
He eventually passed through the village called Seipäjärvi that his father had told him about. It was just one street full of little wooden houses, painted red. He walked along the street.
An old toothless lady, bent double over a walking stick, was coming along the road. In Nikolas’s limited experience every village always had to have one old toothless person, walking around and saying scary things to strangers, so he was pleased that Seipäjärvi was no exception.
‘Where go you, mysterious boy, with a mouse in your pocket?’ she said.
‘North,’ is all he told her.
‘To look for cheese,’ added Miika, who still hadn’t really got the point of the journey.
The old woman was quite weird, but not weird enough to understand mouse language, so she just looked at Nikolas and shook her head.
‘Not north,’ she said, her face as pale as a sheet. (A pale sheet, obviously.) ‘Go east,’ she said, ‘or south, or west . . . Only a fool would go north. No one lives in Lapland. There is nothing there.’
‘Well, I must be a fool,’ said Nikolas.
‘There is nothing wrong with being a fool,’ said a Fool, with little bells on his shoes, who was passing by.
‘The thing is, I’m looking for my father. He’s a woodcutter. He’s called Joel. He wears a red hat. He has very tired eyes. He only has nine and a half fingers. He was with six other men. They were on their way to the Far North.’
The old woman considered him. Her face creased like a map. And speaking of maps, she pulled out something crumpled in her pocket and handed it to him.
A map.
‘There were some men, yes, now I think of it . . . Seven of them. They came through at the start of the summer. They had maps.’ Nikolas felt a surge of excitement. ‘They dropped this one.’
‘Have they been back?’
The old lady shook her head. ‘I tell you. Those that go north never return.’
‘Well, thank you, thank you so much,’ said Nikolas. He tried to smile to hide his worry. He had to give her something so he decided upon berries, as he didn’t have much else. ‘Please, please have these berries.’ The old lady smiled in return and Nikolas saw her gums were brown and rotten.
‘You are a good boy. Take my shawl. You’ll need all the warmth you can get.’
And Nikolas, who could feel that even Miika, though relatively warm inside his coat pocket, was beginning to shiver, took the gift and thanked her again and went on his way.
On and on he walked, following the map, over plains and ice-covered lakes and snow-covered fields and forests full of spruce trees.
One afternoon, Nikolas sat down underneath one of the snowy spruce trees and checked his feet. They were covered in blisters. The only bits of skin that weren’t covered in blisters were bright red. And his shoes, which had been tatty to start off with, had practically fallen to pieces.
‘It’s no use,’ he told Miika. ‘I don’t think I can go on. I’m too tired. It’s getting too cold. I’ll have to go home.’
But even when he said that word – ‘home’ – he realised that he didn’t have one. There was the cottage in the pine forest. But that wasn’t home any more. Not with Aunt Carlotta living there. Not when he wasn’t even able to sleep in his own bed.
‘Listen, Miika,’ he said, feeding the mouse a mushroom as he sat down by a tree. ‘It might be best for you if you stayed in this forest. Look at the map. I don’t know if we’ll make it.’
Nikolas and Miika peered at the map, but the path they had to follow was illustrated by a dotted line that looked like footsteps in the snow. The map had no straight lines on it. It was just one long, curving path, weaving through forests and around lakes, towards a large mountain. He knew the mountain was large because it was called, on the map, ‘Very Large Mountain’.
He lifted the mouse out of his pocket and placed him on the ground. ‘Go on, Miika. Leave me. Look, there are leaves and berries. You’ll be able to live here. Go. Go on.’
The mouse looked up at him. ‘Leaves and berries? Don’t insult me with talk of leaves and berries!’
‘Seriously, Miika, it’s for the best.’ But Miika just crawled back onto Nikolas’s foot, and Nikolas put the mouse back in his pocket. Nikolas rested his head on the mossy ground and pulled the old lady’s shawl over him and right there, in daylight, he fell asleep.
As he slept, snow fell.
He had a dream, about being a child, and going to the hills near Lake Blitzen, and of being on the sleigh as his father pushed him and his mother laughed. He was so happy, inside that dream.
There was a scratchy feeling and he sprung awake. Miika was pawing at his chest, and squeaking with fear.
‘What is it, Miika?’
‘I don’t have a clue!’ squeaked Miika. ‘But it’s really big, and it has horns on its head!’
Then Nikolas saw it.
The creature.
It was so close that for a moment he didn’t know what it was. It certainly seemed large, from where Nikolas was sitting. But it wasn’t a bear. It was covered in dark grey fur and had a broad strong-looking head. Like a moose, but definitely not one. The creature’s chest was heaving with deep breaths, and wasn’t grey, but as white as the snow. The animal was making strange noises, as if it was a pig crossed with a wolf. He saw the large velvet-haired antlers that bent and twisted like trees leaning in the wind.
Then he realised.
It was a reindeer.
A very big and very angry reindeer.
And it was staring straight at Nikolas.
The Reindeer
The reindeer stood back, looking large and ferocious. Its dark grey fur was the colour of the storm clouds above. It moved its giant head from left to right and then up, and let out a strange grunting roar, as a roll of thunder crashed in the sky.
Miika squeaked meekly in fear. Nikolas clambered to his feet.
‘Good reindeer! Good boy! Good boy! Are you a boy?’ (Nikolas looked.) ‘You are a boy. It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. Okay? I’m a friend.’
The words had no effect.
In fact they made the reindeer rear up on its hind legs. The animal towered above Nikolas, and its front hooves came within an inch from his face, pawing the air in anger.
Nikolas backed into a tree. His heart was pounding.
‘What should we do?’ he asked Miika, but Miika clearly had no plans he felt inclined to share.
‘Should we run?’ Nikolas knew there was no way he would be able to outrun the reindeer. His breath whitened the air and he was rigid with shock.
The reindeer was a big heavy mass of muscle and fur and clouded nostril-breath. Through the stormy air he came, wild, grunting, huffing, with his head low now and the large antlers pointing directly into Nikolas’s face. This must have been the largest and most furious reindeer in the whole of Finland.
Lightning flashed across the sky. Nikolas glanced up.
‘Hold on tight, Miika,’ Nikolas said, and he jumped up, grabbing the branch just above him with two hands, and swinging himself out of the reindeer’s path as thunder rumbled. The reindeer collided straight into the spruce tree as Nikolas hooked his leg around the branch and held on even tighter. Nikolas was hoping that the reindeer would eventually get bored and leave him in peace, but the reindeer stayed there, pawing the ground and circling the tree.
Nikolas noticed something.
The reindeer was hobbling. There was a thin broken line of wood sticking out of one of its rear legs. It had been shot with an arrow.
Poor creature, thought Nikolas.
Just then, Nikolas felt the branch crack beneath him and he plummeted towards the snowy ground landing hard on his back.
‘Aaagh!’
A shadow moved over him. It was the reindeer.
‘Listen,’ Nikolas gasped, ‘I can get it out.’
He mimed the action of pulling an arrow out of a leg. Reindeer, as a rule, aren’t very good at understanding mime, and so the reindeer swung his head around, his antlers crashing into Nikolas’s ribs. This also caused Miika to fly out of his pocket, somersaulting through the air, only to collide with a tree.
Nikolas clambered to his feet, fighting off the pain.
‘You’re hurt. I can help you.’
The reindeer paused. It made a grunty, snuffling sound. Nikolas took a deep breath, summoned up all the courage he possessed, and edged forward. He gingerly touched the reindeer’s leg, just above the arrow. He stopped.
The arrow feathers were grey. This was exactly like the arrow that had been fired at the bear. This was an arrow belonging to Anders the hunter.
‘They’ve been here,’ Nikolas thought aloud.
He pulled the arrow out, fast, and scooped up some snow in his hands, remembering how his dad had once helped the moose. He padded snow around the wound, where the arrow had pierced the skin.
‘I know that hurt. But you’ll feel better soon.’
The arrow had been stuck deep in the flesh, but Nikolas saw that the blood had hardened and realised that the arrow had probably been stuck there for days, if not weeks. The poor creature was moving again now, yanking his leg from left to right in pain. Then it made a deep anguished moan.
‘It’s all right. It’s all right,’ Nikolas said, as the moaning faded away.
The reindeer shivered from the shock a little and turned, and bit Nikolas’s thigh.
‘Hey! I’m trying to help you.’
And then the reindeer bowed his head and stood still for a moment, and went to the toilet.
‘Here,’ said Nikolas, summoning up the last bit of courage he had. He scooped up some more snow and patted it on the wound.
After a couple of minutes the reindeer stopped shaking and seemed calmer. The clouds of air coming out of its nostrils grew smaller, and it started grazing in the snow looking for tufts of grass.
Sensing that the reindeer would finally leave him alone, Nikolas stood up on his aching blistered freezing feet, and brushed himself down. Miika ran over and Nikolas put him into his coat pocket. They both looked up and saw the largest brightest light in the night sky. The North Star. Nikolas checked around him, and saw a large lake to the east and ice plains to the west. He looked down at the map. They needed to walk directly north, in the straightest line possible. He started walking in that direction, crunching through the thickening snow. But after a little while he heard footsteps.
The reindeer.
Only this time it wasn’t trying to charge him. It just tilted its head, like a dog might.
‘I don’t like that scary moose with trees growing out of his head,’ grumbled Miika.
Nikolas carried on walking, and every time he stopped to look back, the reindeer stopped too.
‘Shoo,’ said Nikolas. ‘You don’t want to come with us, trust me. I still have a long way to go and I’m not much company.’
/> But the reindeer kept following him. Eventually, after several miles, Nikolas grew tired again. His legs felt heavy. He could see the soles of his feet through his shoes. And his head ached from cold and exhaustion. The reindeer though, despite his injured leg, didn’t seem tired at all. Indeed, when Nikolas was forced to stop and rest his legs and take the pressure off his blisters the reindeer walked in front of him and, noticing Nikolas’s damaged shoes and injured feet, lowered his head and knelt on his front two knees.
‘You want me to climb on your back?’ Nikolas asked.
The reindeer made a snuffling, grunting sort of sound.
‘Is that “yes” in reindeer? Miika, what do you think?’
‘I think “no”,’ said Miika.
Nikolas’s legs were so tired and his feet so painful that he decided to risk it. ‘You do realise there are two of us? My mouse and me. Is that okay?’
It appeared to be. So Nikolas climbed on the reindeer’s back, and, well, did the only thing he could do.
He hoped for the best.
Something Red
As Nikolas discovered, riding a reindeer is a little easier than you think. It is a bit of a bumpy ride, but still a lot better than walking, especially walking on blistered feet. Indeed, even the bumpiness was something that Nikolas grew used to. He sat there, holding his hand delicately over his coat pocket to help keep Miika warm.
‘I need to give you a name,’ he told the reindeer. ‘Names might not be important to reindeer but they are important to people. What about . . .’ He closed his eyes and he remembered the dream he’d had, of sledging by Lake Blitzen, as a child. ‘Blitzen?’
The reindeer’s ears pricked up, and he raised his head. Nikolas decided that Blitzen it should be. ‘That’s what I’m going to call you, if that’s all right?’