by Matt Haig
And it seemed as if all was right.
Nikolas, Miika and Blitzen travelled together for what seemed like days. It got colder and colder, and Nikolas was thankful for having Blitzen, the old lady’s shawl, and Miika to keep his hand warm in his pocket. He often leant forward to hug the reindeer and to feed him from the small supply of mushrooms and berries he kept in his right-hand pocket.
Eventually the landscape became entirely white, and Nikolas knew they were at the empty bit on the map. The snow got deeper and the wind got harsher, but Blitzen proved tough. His strong legs and sturdy frame powered through the deepening snow. It became difficult to see far ahead amid all the whiteness, but something was rising on the horizon. A vast wide craggy peak.
Finally, as the tiny sliver of a sickle moon hung low in the sky the snow stopped falling and they reached the Very Large Mountain.
Nikolas gave Blitzen his second to last mushroom, and his last one to Miika. He ate nothing himself, though his stomach rumbled like a distant storm. The mountain seemed to go on for ever. The further they climbed, the higher it seemed to get.
Blitzen was beginning to slow down, as if he finally was exhausted.
‘Good boy, Blitzen,’ Nikolas kept saying, wearily. ‘Good boy.’ He kept one hand over Miika to keep him safe in his pocket and occasionally used the other to pat the reindeer’s back.
Blitzen’s feet were pressing on nothing but snow now and it was getting thicker. It was a wonder he could keep going at all.
Nikolas felt blinded by the white until at last, half way up the mountain, there was a flash of red, looking like a streak of blood, a scar in the snow. Nikolas jumped off the reindeer and clambered through the freezing whiteness towards it.
It was hard work. He sank into the snow, knee-deep every time he took a step. It was as if the mountain wasn’t a mountain but just a giant pile of snow.
Eventually he got there. It wasn’t blood though. It was a red hat and he recognised it in an instant.
It was his father’s red hat.
The hat he had made from a red rag, and a fluffy white cotton bobble.
It was cold and frozen and clogged with powdery snow but there was no mistaking it.
Nikolas felt a deep, piercing anguish shoot through his weak body. He feared the worst had happened.
‘Papa!’ he shouted over and over again. He dug with his hands into the snow. ‘Papa! Papa!’
He tried to tell himself that finding his father’s hat didn’t mean anything. Maybe it had just blown off his father’s head and he had been in a hurry and hadn’t been able to find it again. Maybe. But when your bones ache with cold and when you are starving with hunger, it is hard to keep looking on the bright side.
‘Papa! Papaaaaa!’
He stayed there, digging the snow with his bare hands, until shaking and frozen he finally burst into tears.
‘It’s all useless!’ Nikolas told Miika, who was looking out of his coat pocket, his small shivering head braving the cold. ‘It’s no use. He’s probably dead. We must turn around.’ He then shouted louder, addressing Blitzen. ‘We must head south. I’m sorry. I should never have taken you with me. I shouldn’t have taken either of you. It’s too harsh and too dangerous, even for a reindeer. Let’s go back where we came from.’
But Blitzen wasn’t listening. He was walking away, struggling through the thick snow, climbing further up the mountain.
‘Blitzen! You’re going the wrong way! There’s nothing for us there.’
But still Blitzen kept walking. He turned his head, as if to tell Nikolas to keep going. For a moment, Nikolas thought about staying still. Just staying there until the snow covered him and until he was – like his father – part of the mountain itself. There seemed no point in going forwards or backwards. He realised how stupid he had been to leave the cottage. Hope finally left him.
It was so cold his tears froze on his face.
He knew it wouldn’t take him long to die.
Shivering, he watched Blitzen climb.
‘Blitzen!’
He closed his eyes. He stopped crying. Waited for the chill to leave his bones and peace to come at last. But in a matter of minutes he felt a gentle, tender nudge against his ear. Opening his eyes he saw Blitzen’s unblinking eyes behind a cloud of warm breath, looking at him in a way that made him think that he understood everything.
What was it that made Nikolas climb back on the reindeer?
Was it hope? Was it courage? Was it just a need to finish what he had started?
One thing is certain. Nikolas felt something beginning to burn inside him, weak and tired and cold and hungry and sad as he was. He grabbed hold of his father’s hat, shook off the loose snow and put it on his head, and climbed back onto the reindeer. And the reindeer – tired and cold and hungry as he was – carried on walking up that mountain. Because that is what mountains are for.
The End of Magic
If you keep on climbing a mountain you will eventually reach the top. That’s the thing with mountains. However big they are, there is always a top. Even if it takes all through the day and all through another night you will usually get there, if you keep remembering there is a top. Well, unless the mountain is in the Himalayas, in which case the mountain just keeps on going and even though you know there is a top you freeze to death and all your toes fall off before you get there. But this wasn’t that big a mountain. And Nikolas’s toes didn’t fall off.
He, Blitzen and Miika carried on, as green curtains of light filled the night sky.
‘Look, Miika, it’s the Northern Lights!’
And Miika stood on his hind legs in Nikolas’s pocket, and stared up, and saw the vastness of the sky was filled with beautiful, mysterious, ghostly light. To be honest, Miika didn’t care. Beauty is not of particular interest to a mouse, unless it was the beauty of the creamy yellowness or blue veins of a nice piece of cheese. So as soon as Miika peeked his head out of Nikolas’s pocket he curled back down again.
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ said Nikolas, gazing up at the aurora, which looked to him like someone was sprinkling glowing green dust across the heavens.
‘Warmth is wonderful,’ said Miika.
By sunrise, they reached the top of the mountain. And though the sky was blue and the Northern Lights had disappeared, there was still glowing. Just lower down now, in the valley beyond the mountain. And this aurora wasn’t just every variety of green, it was every colour in the rainbow. Nikolas looked at the map, trying to recognise any of the landscape. Beyond the mountain, the elf village was supposed to be there, visible, but there was nothing but a snow-filled plain of land leading towards the horizon. Actually, no. There were some hills in the distance, to the northwest, with tall pine trees, but there was no other sign of life.
They continued to head directly north, towards the multi-coloured lights, down the mountain, trudging through the light-filled air.
It was incredible how quickly Nikolas’s spirits fell. On top of the mountain, everything had seemed possible, but now, trudging through thick snow, he was getting worried again.
‘I must be going mad,’ Nikolas said. His hunger was beginning to hurt, as though there was something alive, growling and moving, inside his stomach. He pulled his father’s hat down over his ears. They walked on, through the snow, which was starting to thin a little, but still felt heavy, and through red and yellow and green and purple-tinged air. Also, Nikolas could sense that something was wrong with Blitzen. He was slowing down, and his head kept dropping so low Nikolas couldn’t see his antlers.
‘You need to sleep, I need to sleep,’ said Nikolas. ‘We’ve got to stop.’
But Blitzen didn’t stop. He kept on. One faltering step after another until his knees buckled and he collapsed in the snow.
Thud.
Nikolas was trapped under him. And Blitzen, one of the largest reindeer there had ever been, was heavy. Miika crawled out of Nikolas’s pocket and scampered over the snowy ground, round to Blitzen, scrat
ching at his face to try and wake him.
‘Blitzen! Wake up! You’re on my leg!’ shouted Nikolas.
But Blitzen wasn’t waking up.
He could feel his leg was getting crushed. The pain throbbed, from his ankle through his entire body, until there was little else to think about. Just pain. He tried pushing against Blitzen’s back, and wriggling his leg in the snow. If Nikolas hadn’t been so weak and hungry he might have been able to free himself. But Blitzen was getting heavier and colder all the time.
‘Blitzen!’ yelled Nikolas. ‘Blitzen!’
He realised he could just die here and no one would know or care. Terror filled Nikolas with a new kind of chill, as the strange lights kept shifting in the air around him. Red, yellow, blue, green, purple.
‘Miika, go . . . I think I’m stuck here . . . Go on . . . Go . . .’
Miika looked around, worried, but then saw something. Something Nikolas’s human eyes couldn’t see.
‘What is it, Miika?’
Miika squeaked an answer that Nikolas couldn’t understand.
‘Cheese,’ said Miika. ‘I smell cheese!’
Of course, there was no cheese to be seen, but that didn’t stop Miika. If you believed in something you didn’t need to see it.
And so the mouse ran and kept running. The snow, though thick, was light and fluffy and evenly spread on the ground, and Miika was moving fast, churning through it, heading north.
Nikolas watched his mouse friend become a dot and then disappear completely. ‘Goodbye, my friend. Good luck!’
He lifted his hand to wave. His fingers were so cold they had turned a deep, dark purple. It felt as if they were burning up. His stomach ached with cramp. His leg, squeezed between the weight of a reindeer and the weight of the world, was in agony. He closed his eyes, and imagined a vast feast. Ham, gingerbread, chocolate, cake, bilberry pie.
Nikolas lay back in the snow and felt an overwhelming exhaustion, as though life was leaving him too.
Miika had disappeared. And then Nikolas felt so dreadful he said something equally dreadful. The very worst thing that anyone can ever say. (Close your eyes and ears, especially if you are an elf.)
‘There is no magic,’ he whispered, delirious. And, after that, everything became darkness.
Father Topo and Little Noosh
There were voices in the dark . . . ‘Kabeecha loska! Kabeecha tikki!’ said one voice. It was a strange voice. Small, fast and high-pitched. A girl’s voice, maybe.
‘Ta huuure. Ahtauma loska es nuoska, Noosh.’ This second voice was slower and deeper, but still strange. It was almost like singing.
Was he dead?
Well, no. Not quite. But nor was he alive, and if they had found him and Blitzen even just a minute later then they would have found two dead bodies.
The first thing Nikolas noticed was the warmth.
It felt like a kind of warm syrup was pouring into him from the inside. He did not yet feel the small hand pressed against his heart, but he could still hear the voices, even if they did sound a million miles away.
‘What is it, Grandpapa?’ said the high-pitched voice, which now – even more weirdly – Nikolas could understand perfectly, as if it was his own language.
‘It’s a boy, Noosh,’ said the other.
‘A boy? But he’s taller than you, Grandpapa.’
‘That’s because he’s a special kind of boy.’
‘A special kind? What kind?’
‘He’s a human,’ the deeper voice said, carefully.
There was a gasp. ‘A human? Will he eat us?’
‘No.’
‘Should we run away?’
‘It’s perfectly safe, I’m sure. And even if it’s not, we must never let fear be our guide.’
‘Look at his weird ears.’
‘Yes. Human ears can take a lot of getting used to.’
‘But what about what happened to . . . ?’
‘Come on, Little Noosh, we mustn’t think of that. We must always help those who are in trouble . . . Even if they are human.’
‘He looks terrible.’
‘Yes. Yes, he does. That is why we must do everything we can, Noosh.’
‘Is it working?’
‘Yes.’ A degree of worry rose up in his voice. ‘I believe it is. And on the reindeer too.’
Blitzen woke and slowly rolled over, taking his weight off Nikolas, whose eyes were now blinking awake.
Nikolas gasped. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Then he saw the two creatures, and gasped again, because that is what you do if you see elves.
The elves were both quite short, as elves tend to be, although one was taller than the other. Nikolas could see the smaller one was a girl elf. She had black hair and skin whiter than the snow and sharp cheeks and pointed ears and large eyes slightly too far apart. She was wearing a dark green-brown tunic that didn’t look very warm, but she didn’t seem to be cold. The older and bigger elf was wearing a similar-coloured tunic and a red belt. He had a long white moustache and white hair and a serious, but kind look about him. His eyes twinkled like morning frost in sunshine.
‘Who are you?’ asked Nikolas. But really he meant what rather than who.
‘I am Little Noosh,’ said Little Noosh. ‘What’s your name?’
‘I’m Nikolas.’
‘And I am Father Topo, Noosh’s grandpapa,’ said the other elf, who was looking around him, to see if anyone was watching. ‘Well, great-great-great-great-great-grandpapa, if we’re being specific. We are elves.’
Elves.
‘Am I dead?’ asked Nikolas, which was a bit of a silly question, as for the first time in weeks he could feel warmth flooding through his veins and excitement rising in his chest.
‘No. You are not dead,’ said Father Topo. ‘Despite your best efforts! You are very much alive, thanks to the goodness we found inside you.’
Nikolas was confused. ‘But . . . but I don’t feel cold. Or weak.’
‘Grandpapa worked a little magic,’ said Little Noosh.
‘Magic?’
‘A little drimwick.’
‘Drimwick? What’s that?’
Little Noosh looked at Nikolas and then at her grandpapa and back at Nikolas again. ‘You don’t know what a drimwick is?’ she said.
Father Topo looked down at the little elf girl. ‘He’s from the other side of the mountain. There’s not much magic where humans come from.’ He smiled at Nikolas and Blitzen. ‘A drimwick is a hope spell. You just close your eyes and wish for something, and if you wish in just the right kind of way you can make it happen. It’s one of the earliest spells, laid out in the first Book of Hope and Wonder. That’s an elf book about magic. I put my hand on you and your reindeer friend and I wished you to be warm, and to be strong, and to be always safe.’
‘Always safe?’ said Nikolas, confused, as Blitzen licked his ear. ‘That’s impossible.’
Little Noosh gasped as Father Topo covered her ears. ‘Elves never ever say that word.’ He shook his head. ‘An impossibility is just a possibility you don’t understand yet . . . but now, you must leave Elfhelm,’ said Father Topo. ‘And you must leave quickly.’
‘Elfhelm? The elf village?’ asked Nikolas. ‘But I’m not even there.’
Little Noosh laughed a long elf laugh (which is very long indeed). Father Topo gave her a stern look.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked Nikolas, thinking that even if you had saved someone’s life it was still rather rude to laugh at them.
‘We are standing on the Street of Seven Curves,’ giggled Little Noosh.
‘What? This isn’t a street. It’s the middle of nowhere. There is just snow. And . . . sort of . . . colours.’
Little Noosh looked at Father Topo. ‘Tell him, Grandpapa, tell him.’
Father Topo looked around to check no one was watching and quickly explained. ‘This is the longest street in Elfhelm. We are in the southeastern corner of the village. The street winds westwards all the way to t
he Wooded Hills, beyond the fringes of the village.’
‘Wooded Hills?’ asked Nikolas. ‘But I can’t see anything. Just colours in the air.’
‘And over there is Silver Lake and the Reindeer Field, and all the shops on Reindeer Field Street,’ said Little Noosh, jumping up and down and pointing to the north.
‘Lake? What lake?’
‘And there’s Elfhelm village hall,’ she said, pointing in the opposite direction to nothing in particular.
Nikolas didn’t understand. He stood up. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Is he blind?’ asked Little Noosh.
Father Topo looked at Nikolas then at Little Noosh. Very quietly he said, ‘To see something, you have to believe in it. Really believe it. That’s the first elf rule. You can’t see something you don’t believe in. Now try your hardest and see if you can see what you have been looking for.’
The Elf Village
Nikolas looked around him as, slowly, the hundreds of colours, floating in the air, became less ghostly and more real. More intense and vivid and solid. Nikolas watched as the colours that had before been floating as free as a gas in the air, formed themselves into lines and shapes. Squares, triangles, rectangles. Roads, buildings, a whole village, appearing out of the air. The elf village. They were standing on a street full of small green cabins. There was another road, a bigger one cutting into it from the east. Nikolas looked down at the ground. There was still snow. That hadn’t changed. He cast his eyes along the wider road, heading north in front of him. On each side of the road stood buildings, timber-framed with snow-covered roofs. Nikolas saw that one of the buildings had a giant wooden clog hanging outside it. Another had a little spinning top painted onto a sign. A toy shop, maybe. Beyond that was the lake Little Noosh had told him about, like an oversized oval mirror, which was right next to a field full of reindeer. Blitzen had noticed this too, and was looking over with interest.