by Matt Haig
To the west, before the Wooded Hills, was a large round dark tower, pointing to the sky. Directly to the north was the place that Little Noosh had been pointing towards: Elfhelm village hall, made of dark, almost black timber. It was by far the largest building in the whole village. Not as tall as the tower (it was only two storeys high) but wide and with around twenty windows, which glowed with light. Nikolas could hear singing, and the smell of something sweet and wonderful was wafting from the direction of the hall. Something he hadn’t smelt in over a year. Gingerbread. If anything, it smelt even better than it had done outside the baker’s shop in Kristiinankaupunki.
‘Wow, Elfhelm. My father was right, it’s just how he described it.’
‘I like your hat,’ said Little Noosh.
‘Thanks,’ said Nikolas. He took the hat off and looked at it. ‘It’s my father’s hat. He was on an expedition to Elfhelm. I wanted to know if he had made it. He was with six other men. He was called . . .’
But Little Noosh started excitedly talking over him. ‘Red is my favourite colour! After green. And yellow. I like every colour, really. Except purple. Purple makes me feel sad thoughts. That is where we live,’ she told him. She pointed towards a red and green cabin a small way in the distance.
‘It’s wonderful,’ said Nikolas, ‘but I also wondered if you’d seen a mouse?’
‘Yes!’ shouted Little Noosh. Father Topo quickly covered her mouth with his hand.
‘Okay, human child, now you’ve seen Elfhelm, you had better take your reindeer and go,’ said Father Topo. ‘Whatever you expect to find, won’t be here.’
Blitzen nudged Nikolas’s shoulder as if he understood the new urgency in Father Topo’s voice but Nikolas stayed where he was.
‘I came to find my father,’ he said. ‘I’ve travelled over one thousand miles. Blitzen and I are not just going to turn around and go back.’
The old elf shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not wise for a human to be here. You must go back to the south. It’s for your own good.’
Nikolas looked into Father Topo’s eyes and pleaded. ‘My father is all I have got. I need to know if he made it to Elfhelm.’
‘He could be our pet!’ suggested Little Noosh.
Father Topo patted the elf girl on the head. ‘I don’t think humans like to be pets, Little Noosh.’
‘Please, I come here peacefully. I just want to know what happened to my father.’
Father Topo considered. ‘I suppose, given the season, there might be a chance you could be welcomed.’
This excited Little Noosh. ‘Let’s take him to the hall!’
‘I won’t cause any trouble. I promise,’ said Nikolas.
Father Topo gave a quick glance over to the tall circular tower in the west. ‘Trouble doesn’t always have to be caused. It’s sometimes already there.’
Nikolas had no idea what this meant, but he followed the elves, as they walked in their clogs towards the wooden hall beyond the lake. They walked onto the broad shopping street, passing a sign that declared simply ‘The Main Path’, and the clog-shop, and a bakery with smoke-stained windows, a toy-and-sleigh shop with a poster advertising lessons at the School of Sleighcraft.
He also passed a crooked black-tiled building, with windows made of ice. ‘The Daily Snow’ read the sign outside.
‘The main elf newspaper,’ explained Father Topo. ‘Full of fear and nonsense.’
There were free copies of the newspaper piled high outside.
‘LITTLE KIP STILL MISSING’ was the headline, and Nikolas wondered who Little Kip was. He was about to ask, but though they were small, the elves were fast walkers and they were already some way ahead. He and Blitzen were struggling to keep up.
‘What’s that building?’ he asked. ‘The tall tower?’
‘Look,’ said Father Topo, changing the subject. ‘That’s the North Pole.’ He pointed at a thin green rod sticking out of the ground.
Little Noosh spoke up. ‘Do you think Father Vodol will be kind?’
‘I think it will be all right,’ said the old elf. ‘Come on, Little Noosh. We elves are kind and welcoming in our hearts. Well, we always used to be. Even Father Vodol knows that . . .’
Nikolas was confused. ‘Erm, Father Tippo?’
‘Topo.’ The old elf corrected him.
‘Father Topo, sorry. I just wanted to ask if . . .’
‘Here you are, Blitzen!’ exclaimed Little Noosh.
They had reached the clear, icy lake. Just beyond it lay an open field where seven other reindeer were happily chewing lichen from the trees.
‘Do you know if my father . . .’
Father Topo ignored him and called out to the reindeer. ‘Oh, deerlings, come here! Here’s a new friend.’
Meanwhile, Little Noosh was back to talking about her favourite colours. ‘I quite like indigo. It’s much nicer than purple. And crimson. And turquoise. And magenta.’
Blitzen stood behind Nikolas and nuzzled his shoulder. ‘He’s a bit anti-social,’ Nikolas explained to Father Topo.
But one of the reindeer, a female, came over and gave Blitzen the gift of some grass. For a moment, Nikolas thought he saw her feet actually leave the ground – a gap between where the reindeer’s body ended and where his shadow began. But maybe he had just imagined that.
‘Ah, that’s Donner,’ said Little Noosh, ‘the kindest of all.’ Little Noosh started pointing at all the other reindeer. ‘And there’s Comet, with the white streak on his back, and Prancer, he’s so funny, skipping with Cupid. Cupid will lick your hand off if you let him. Oh, and . . . and . . . and . . . the dark one, that’s old Vixen, she’s a bit of a grumpy thing, and that one is Dancer, and Dasher, who is the fastest of the lot.’
‘Are you okay, boy?’ Nikolas asked Blitzen, but Blitzen was already off, making friends. Nikolas noticed that the scar on Blitzen’s leg had totally healed.
Once Blitzen was grazing contentedly, they walked on, past a sign pointing west to ‘The Wooded Hills Where The Pixies Live’. The music got louder, the scent of gingerbread stronger, and a sense of fear mixed with a strange excitement until they had reached the door of the old village hall.
‘Oh, and you do know what day it is, don’t you?’ said Father Topo, with a nervous smile.
‘No. I don’t even know the month!’ ‘It’s the twenty-third of December! Two days till Christmas. This is our Christmas party. The only party we’re allowed now. But not as good as it used to be, because dancing has been banned.’
Nikolas couldn’t believe he had been away that long, but there were even harder things to believe, as he was about to find out.
The Mystery of Little Kip
If you were an eleven-year-old boy of sufficient height, like Nikolas, you would have to duck to get in through the Elfhelm village hall door. But once he was inside, Nikolas was overwhelmed by what he saw. There were seven extremely long wooden tables, around which were seated elves. Hundreds of elves. There were small elves and slightly less small elves. There were child elves and grown-up elves. Thin ones, fat ones, somewhere-in-between ones.
He had always imagined that seeing the elves would be the happiest thing in the world, but the atmosphere was very miserable. The elves were divided according to the colour of the tunic.
‘I’m a green tunic,’ said Father Topo. ‘So that means we sit at the top table. The green tunics are members of the Elf Council. The blue tunics are the elves who have specialisms, like toymaking or sleighcraft or gingerbread making. And the brown tunics are elves with no specialism. It didn’t used to be like this. Before Father Vodol we all sat together. That was what being an elf meant. Togetherness.’
‘Who is Father Vodol?’
‘Sssh! Not so loud. He’ll hear you.’
When Nikolas had imagined an elf Christmas, he had always thought there would be singing and that there would be lots of sweet things to eat. And there were sweet things to eat – the whole place smelt of cinnamon and gingerbread – though the elve
s didn’t seem to be enjoying the food much. There was also singing, but the elves were singing it in the most miserable voices imaginable, despite the happy lyrics:
Our problems, well, they come and go,
They fall and melt just like the snow.
But so long as we can smile and sing,
Problems they won’t mean a thing.
Because we can feast and we can rhyme,
And be happy that it’s Christmas time!
But no one was happy. The faces were all sad, or sour. Nikolas felt uneasy. He whispered to Father Topo, ‘What’s the matter? Why do they look so unhappy?’
Before Topo could answer, his great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter proved that not all elves were unhappy. She was already squealing with joy: ‘It’s nearly Christmas!’
There was silence and a tightening of the air, as if the whole room was holding its breath. All the elves had noticed them now and turned to look at Nikolas.
Father Topo cleared his throat.
‘Hello, elves! It looks like we have a special guest just in time for Christmas! Now, as it is Christmas time we should show kindness to others, and I think we should all show some good old-fashioned elf hospitality, even if he is a human.’
The elves gasped at the word.
‘A human!’ one cried. ‘What about the New Rules?’ This elf, who was wearing a blue tunic, had a strange beard. It was stripy. He was pointing to a poster, torn from the Daily Snow, that was pinned to the wall. It said: ‘THE NEW RULES FOR ELVES’. And then gave a list.
Nikolas forced himself to smile and wave, but there was an awkward silence and only one small elf child waved back. Some of the old elves tutted and grumbled to themselves. It made no sense. Weren’t elves meant to be friendly? Every time Nikolas had pictured an elf he had pictured a happy creature, smiling, dancing, toymaking, and offering gifts of gingerbread. That was certainly what his father had told him. But maybe the stories weren’t factually correct. These elves just turned and said nothing and gave very long glares. He had never considered glaring was such an important part of being an elf.
‘Should I leave?’ asked Nikolas, feeling uncomfortable.
‘No. No, no, no. No. No,’ said Little Noosh. And then, just to be clear: ‘No.’
Father Topo shook his head. ‘There’s no need for that. You can sit down with us. We’ll find some seats at the top table.’
The whole hall stayed quiet, listening to Father Topo’s clogs tapping on the tiled floor as the three of them walked the length of the room. It was quite dark, with only five flaming torches on each wall, but Nikolas wished it were darker still, so that he couldn’t be seen. Indeed, he wished he wasn’t there at all, even though the food on each table was tantalising for a boy who had known nothing but mushrooms and the occasional cloudberry or lingonberry these past few weeks.
Gingerbread.
Sweet plum soup.
Jam pastries.
Bilberry pie.
Little Noosh held Nikolas’s hand. Her hand was small, but her fingers were long and thin, with pointed little nails. She, like many young elves, knew goodness when she saw it. She had no doubt in her mind that, despite being human and having human ears, Nikolas wasn’t somebody she should be afraid of. She led him to a seat. Half the elves at the table left in horror as they saw him approach, which meant there were now a lot of empty seats for him to choose from. He sat in the one right next to Little Noosh and as he did, the sight of so much delicious food made him momentarily forget all those elf eyes watching him and he picked up a bowl of plum soup from the middle of the table and drank it in one go, then he stuffed four jam pastries into his mouth, and had made a start on a slab of gingerbread before he noticed an elf woman opposite tutting at him. The elf woman had bright blonde hair in two plaits that stuck out of the side of her head horizontally in perfect straight lines.
‘We don’t want your kind here,’ she hissed. ‘Not after last time.’
‘But he’s nice!’ said Little Noosh. ‘He wears a red hat. No one who wears a red hat can be a bad person! Red is the colour of life and love and sunsets.’
‘Last time?’ said Nikolas.
‘Leave him alone, Mother Ri-Ri,’ said Father Topo. ‘He means no harm.’
‘Harm? Harm? Harm! Of course he means harm. You ask Little Kip if he means no harm . . . He’s human. Humans are all harm.’
Another elf – solemn-faced, at another table – piped up. ‘Father Vodol won’t be happy.’
Father Topo considered. ‘That might be true, Father Dorin, but we are good elves.’ He sighed.
Nikolas was confused.
‘Who is Little Kip?’ asked Nikolas, remembering the headline in the Daily Snow.
And as he said the words ‘Little Kip’ the other elves at the table stopped eating.
‘It’s probably best not to say anything,’ shushed Father Topo.
‘Can I just ask you one more thing?’ said Nikolas.
‘I’d just eat your food and then we should probably . . .’
Before Father Topo could finish his sentence another elf walked towards the table. This elf was the tallest of all the elves, but he was still only the same height as Nikolas was when he was sitting down. He had a long pointed nose, and a black beard that stretched almost to his knees, covering his tunic, and had the kind of screwed-up unpleasant face of someone heading into a permanently strong, icy wind. He was also holding a black wooden staff. All those elves that were still seated around the table looked away, or bowed their heads, or nervously played with their food.
‘No more singing!’ he said to the hall. ‘Singing leads to merriment, and merriment leads to foolishness. I have told you. And this’ – he was pointing at Nikolas – ‘is why.’
Nikolas stopped eating too and met the stare of this scowling, black-bearded elf. His heart began to gallop, and a cold sense of dread fell over him.
An Unpleasant Encounter
Ah, Father Vodol!’ said Father Topo. ‘What a wonderful Christmas party. It is very good that you, as leader of the Elf Council, have made it so . . .’
‘Never mind Christmas!’ interrupted Father Vodol.
The hall fell into total silence. And then Father Vodol spoke again, with quiet menace. ‘Father Topo, I need to speak with you, and the human. In the Council Room. Now.’
‘The Council Room?’
The elf raised his staff and pointed towards the stairs. ‘Now, Father Topo. No delay. Quick as a reindeer.’
Father Topo nodded. He turned and told Little Noosh to wait there and beckoned for Nikolas to follow him. Nikolas did as he was told but felt a little ridiculous at having to duck as he climbed up the stairs at the back of the hall, up to a floor with a very low ceiling, with even lower timber beams.
Nikolas followed the elves past two others in black clothes. These were male elves but had no beards. They were guarding a door that said ‘Council Room’. Then Nikolas found himself in a room that he was a bit too tall for. There was a long table with twenty chairs around it. Each of the chairs had a name engraved into it.
‘Shut the door!’ said Father Vodol, before addressing Father Topo.
‘Were you not at the last meeting, Father Topo?’ he asked, pointing to the chair with Father Topo’s name engraved on it.
‘Yes, yes, I was.’
‘So you will know about the new rules for elves. No humans must be brought here.’
‘Well, I didn’t bring him here. I found him. Him and his collapsed reindeer. A whisker from death, so I . . . so I . . .’ As Father Topo became nervous, Father Vodol stared intently at the elf’s clogs. Within a second, the white-haired elf was off his feet, floating in the air.
‘So you what?’ asked Father Vodol. Nikolas noticed Father Topo was now gasping for air, even though Father Vodol was nowhere near him. Father Topo had tipped upside down and was now rising towards the ceiling, with nothing holding onto him. Biscuits fell out of his pocket. His moustache drooped beside his nose.
&n
bsp; ‘Please,’ Nikolas said. ‘It’s not his fault. He was only trying to . . .’ And then Nikolas stopped speaking, because his mouth was closed shut. He couldn’t move his lips or his jaw. Father Vodol might have been short but his magic was strong.
‘I did a little hope spell,’ spluttered Father Topo.
Father Vodol’s brow reddened with anger. ‘A drimwick? On a human?’
The upside-down elf nodded. ‘Yes, Father Vodol. I’m sorry. But it was the only way I could save him. And drimwick only works on the good, so I thought it safe. And I was with Little Noosh. What kind of example would it have set if I had let him die right there in front of her?’
Father Vodol quivered with rage. ‘Do you know what this means?! You do know that you have given the human gifts he should not have. I take it you have told Little Noosh what happened to Little Kip!’
Nikolas tried to speak, but his jaw was still locked, and his tongue lay as still as a dead fish inside his mouth.
‘No. I don’t want to scare her. I want her to believe the best in people. Even human people. She sees the good in . . .’
Father Vodol’s skin above his beard grew redder and redder, like a sun setting over a thorn bush. Furniture shook, as though the whole room was sharing Father Vodol’s fury. ‘Our powers are not for humans.’
‘Please,’ begged Father Topo. ‘Let us remember how things used to be. Before . . . We are elves. We use our powers for good. You remember. When your newspaper was full of only good news?’
Father Vodol laughed. ‘It’s true. The Daily Snow used to be full of good news. But good news doesn’t sell newspapers.’
‘But good is good!’
Father Vodol nodded. ‘I do not disagree, Father Topo. We must indeed use our powers for good. Which is why we must send a clear message that no outsiders are allowed here any more. We must have strength of purpose and unity. It’s lucky for our community that nobody here has a stronger will than the Holder of the Staff, which is me. I was elected, in a democratic fashion, to rule Elfhelm as I see fit.’