by Matt Haig
Nikolas’s heart skipped a beat. ‘A sleigh?’
He felt properly terrified now. It was like falling while staying still. He took his father’s hat off his head and stared at it. Even scarier than the thought of being killed by a troll, even scarier than being locked in an elf prison, was the idea that his own father could have been one of the men who had kidnapped Little Kip. He didn’t want to say this out loud, but it was a truth in his mind now, and he wanted to make it right.
He wanted to make everything right.
Nikolas looked up at the tiny dark hole. ‘Truth Pixie, do you know what that hole is in the ceiling?’
‘Yes, I do. You see, this didn’t used to be a prison. This used to be a Welcome Tower, back when Mother Ivy was in charge.’
‘I know. Father Vodol told me.’
‘Elves were always welcoming creatures. This place used to be full of friendly elves giving out free plum wine to everyone who came here. Which was no one, but the thought was there. This room was the furnace. They used to have a fire here, which could be seen for miles around, so that those visitors who believed in elves and pixies and magic could find their way here.’
‘I like smoke,’ added Sebastian, thoughtfully.
‘And so that hole you see in the ceiling . . .’ said the Truth Pixie.
‘Was the chimney?’ asked Nikolas.
‘Precisely.’
Nikolas stared up at the dark hole. If he put an arm above his head and jumped up he could probably reach in and touch the sides. But it was impossible to escape. The chimney was smaller than him. Even the Truth Pixie wouldn’t be able to squeeze inside.
But then, what had Father Topo said to him?
‘An impossibility is just a possibility that you don’t understand,’ he said, out loud.
‘Yes,’ said the Truth Pixie. ‘That is the truth.’
The Art of Climbing Through Chimneys
Sebastian fell back to his snoring. The sound was like a motorbike, but motorbikes hadn’t been invented yet, so Nikolas couldn’t compare it to that. Then soon after, the Truth Pixie fell asleep too. The troll was still hogging the bed, so the Truth Pixie had curled up on the floor, holding onto her hewlip leaf. Nikolas was extremely tired. He had never felt so tired before. Not even before Christmas, when he was never able to sleep because he was so excited. He knew he needed to sleep, but he didn’t trust the Truth Pixie. He sat with his back against the cold hard wall staring up at the chimney. Outside, beyond the thick wooden door, in-between Sebastian’s snores, he could just about hear the mumbled voices of the elf guards.
He had to get out of here. Not simply because he was with two creatures who, each for different reasons, wanted to kill him. No. He had to escape and find his father. He had a hunch that he was still alive and he also knew that he was probably with the men who were supposed to have taken Little Kip. There must be some confusion. His father was a good man.
He had to find him.
He had to bring back Little Kip.
He had to make everything all right. But how?
He remembered the day his mother died. Hiding from the brown bear, in the well, holding onto the chain holding the bucket, then losing her grip. The wail, as she fell, while Nikolas watched in horror from the cottage.
On that day, and for a lot of days after (let’s say one thousand and ninety-eight) he had believed that things could only get worse and that he would wake up in tears for the rest of his life, feeling guilty that he hadn’t stayed with her, even though he thought she was running too.
He prayed, somehow, for her to come back.
Joel kept on telling him he looked like his mother but his cheeks weren’t as red so sometimes Nikolas used to grab some berries and crush them on his cheeks and look at his reflection in the lake. And in the blurry water he could almost imagine it was her, looking back from a dream.
‘It’s funny, Papa,’ he once said, as his father chopped a tree. ‘But I could probably have filled that well with tears the amount I have cried.’
‘She wouldn’t want you to cry. She’d want you to be happy. Jolly. She was the happiest person I ever met.’
And so the next morning Nikolas woke up and didn’t cry. He was determined not to. And nor had he had his usual nightmare about his mother falling, falling, falling down that well. So he knew that terrible things – even the most terrible things – couldn’t stop the world from turning. Life went on. And he made a promise to himself that, when he grew older, he’d try and be like his mother. Colourful and happy and kind and full of joy.
That was how he was going to keep her alive.
There were no windows in the tower.
The door was thick wood and solid metal. And besides, there were the guards. He was there, in this damp stone circular room, as stuck as an axle in a wheel. There was a world out there, a world of forests and lakes and mountains and hope, but that world belonged to other people now. Not him. There simply was no way out. And yet, strangely, he wasn’t unhappy. Scared, yes, maybe a little, but also, deep down, hopeful. He began to chuckle to himself.
Impossible.
That was what Father Topo had meant, he realised.
That was the point of magic, wasn’t it? To do the impossible.
Could he – Nikolas – really do magic?
He stared at the chimney, at the small circle of darkness. And he tried to concentrate hard on that chimney, that dark tunnel, and how to get through it. It was an intense darkness, like the darkness of the well. He thought of his mum, falling, and all those times he had imagined it the other way. Of her rising back into life. He thought of staring at the brown bear in the forest that last time, not really that scared, and the bear going away.
His head kept on saying it was impossible but he stared and stared and, slowly, he started to hope. To wish. He thought of all those unhappy elves in the hall. He thought of his father’s sad face the day he had left the cottage to travel north. He thought of Aunt Carlotta making him sleep outside in the cold. He thought of human unhappiness. But he also thought of how it didn’t need to be like that. He thought that, really, humans and probably even elves were good inside but had lost their way a bit. But most of all, he thought of how he could escape the tower. And then he thought of his mother, smiling and laughing and being happy, no matter what.
He began to feel the same peculiar feeling, as if a warm syrup was pouring inside him, just as he had when he first met Father Topo and Little Noosh. It was a feeling of unbreakable joy. Hope, where no hope could exist. And then, before he knew it, he was rising. He was floating off the ground, and very slowly and surely he was climbing through the air above the Truth Pixie and Sebastian. He felt as light as a feather, until he hit his head against the ceiling, right next to the too-small black chimney flue. He fell back towards the ground, but landed on top of Sebastian.
‘It not be Christmas Day now. It be the day after Christmas Day,’ said Sebastian, as he woke up. ‘So I be killing you.’
Amid the commotion, the Truth Pixie had woken up. ‘Yay!’ squealed the Truth Pixie. ‘I mean, it’s technically Christmas Eve. But otherwise – yay!’
Nikolas moved fast, and grabbed the yellow hewlip leaf from the Truth Pixie’s hand. He thrust the leaf towards Sebastian, but it wasn’t the leaf that caused the one-toothed troll to step backwards. It was the fact that Nikolas was suspended in the air again.
‘You be magic. Why you be staying here if you be magic?’
‘I’m beginning to ask myself the same thing,’ said Nikolas.
‘Hey!’ said the Truth Pixie. ‘Get down now and give me my leaf back.’
‘Get away from me,’ said Nikolas, trying to sound as fearsome as he could.
‘Hmmm, that’s tricky actually, as we are trapped in a prison cell,’ said the Truth Pixie.
Sebastian grabbed Nikolas’s leg and tried to pull him back down to the ground.
‘Oh, this is so exciting,’ said the Truth Pixie, smiling broadly and clapping her hands.
‘I love a drama!’
Sebastian’s grip tightened, his rough hands as strong as stone.
‘Get . . . off,’ said Nikolas, but it was no use. He thought of his mother falling, not rising, and that – combined with the strength of the troll – was interfering with the magic. Then something rough was around Nikolas’s neck squeezing hard. Sebastian’s free hand. Nikolas gasped.
‘I . . . can’t . . . breathe . . .’
Then the hand released.
‘I be thinking,’ said Sebastian, matter-of-factly. ‘I might be eating you instead of strangling. I be only have one tooth but it be doing the job.’
And he opened his mouth and was about to bite, when Nikolas shoved the hewlip leaf in his mouth. The Truth Pixie clapped her hands in excitement.
‘Hey!’ came a deep elf voice from outside the door. ‘What’s going on in there?’
‘Nothing!’ said Nikolas.
‘Nothing!’ said Sebastian.
The Truth Pixie covered her mouth but still couldn’t help herself. ‘The human boy is floating in the air while Sebastian is trying to eat him but now the human boy has shoved a hewlip leaf into his mouth so I am anxiously awaiting the explosion of Sebastian’s head,’ she blurted out.
‘Emergency!’ shouted the elf guard behind the door. ‘There’s a crisis in the furnace room!’
Sebastian stumbled backwards as the clop of elf footsteps could be heard echoing up through the tower’s spiral staircase. Then the troll’s face began to tremble. Sebastian looked worried.
‘What be happening?’
Nikolas heard the troll’s stomach rumble. It was more than a rumble. It was more, even, than a grumble.
It sounded like thunder.
Nikolas was now back on the floor.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Nikolas.
‘He’s gonna blow!’ squealed the Truth Pixie. ‘A Christmas Eve spectacular!’
The more-than-grumbling noise rose higher inside the troll, and now the noise was coming from his head. His cheeks wobbled. His forehead started to throb. His lips started to swell. His ears bulged. His head had already been big but it was getting bigger and bigger, it was now wider than his shoulders and he was struggling to hold it up, and all the time the Truth Pixie was clapping her hands in excitement.
‘This is going to be a good one. I can feel it!’
The guards were at the door, trying to find the right key.
Sebastian tried to speak but he couldn’t because his tongue was now the size of a slipper. ‘Buh-buh-buhbuhbuh-buh-burbubbur,’ he said, as he clutched his head. His eyes were now so large that they nearly popped out of his head. Well, one did pop out, and it rolled along the floor towards Nikolas. It lay there, looking up at Nikolas, and was pretty disgusting.
And the Truth Pixie burst into hysterics, looking at the eye. ‘This is so good. Shouldn’t laugh. Bad Pixie. Bad. But it’s just so . . .’
Nikolas saw the Truth Pixie’s face go still. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.
‘I just wet myself,’ she said, and then she started giggling again.
‘What’s happening in there?’ shouted the guards.
‘I wouldn’t open the door just yet,’ said the Truth Pixie. ‘There’s going to be an explo–!’
And that was the moment Sebastian’s head got so big that it exploded, with a loud wet thud. Purple troll blood and grey troll brains splattered everywhere. Over the walls and the Truth Pixie and Nikolas.
‘A-ma-zing!’ said the Truth Pixie, as she applauded. ‘Bravo, Sebastian!’
Sebastian didn’t respond to the Truth Pixie. Not out of rudeness, but out of not having a head. He was just a big troll body with no head. And the body was now falling forwards toward the Truth Pixie who was still laughing so hard that she couldn’t see. So Nikolas quickly dived towards the pixie, hurling her aside, as Sebastian crashed onto the floor, squashing his loose eyeball.
‘You saved my life,’ said the Truth Pixie, a little bit in love.
‘It was nothing.’
Then, the sound of keys in the door.
Nikolas closed his eyes and fought his panic. He was determined now.
‘You can do it,’ said the Truth Pixie.
‘Can I?’
‘Of course you can.’
As the door opened Nikolas was back floating up though the air.
‘Hey!’ shouted an elf guard.
Father Topo’s words came back to Nikolas. You just close your eyes and wish for something to happen. Perhaps a wish was just a hope with a better aim.
If you wished hard enough maybe all kinds of things could happen. He thought about how Father Vodol had made furniture move. Maybe, with enough determination, a chimney could move too.
‘I can do it,’ Nikolas said.
‘Yes, you can,’ agreed the Pixie.
He closed his eyes and wished that he could. Nothing. Stillness. Then warmth, as the wish filled his whole body. He felt a sudden dip in his stomach like he was falling. Or rising.
Then his heart began to race.
When he finally opened his eyes he saw blackness. He was inside the chimney.
He could hear his mother’s voice. ‘My boy! My sweet Christmas boy!’
‘I’m going to be like you, Mum! I’m going to make people happy!’
The chimney bent, twisted and expanded to fit him perfectly as he travelled with considerable speed upwards. He could hear the voice of the Truth Pixie somewhere below him, saying, ‘Told you!’
And then, in no time at all, Nikolas shot out of the chimney, felt the rush of cool air, before he landed hard but painlessly on the steep tower roof.
Blitzen to the Rescue!
The sun was rising. Raw pinks and oranges filled the sky. It was Christmas Eve. He gazed down at Elfhelm, which seemed as small and harmless as a toy village.
He tried to lift his feet from the tiled roof. But no. Nothing. Maybe he was too scared. He heard an elf guard shout out of a tower window to another elf on the path below.
‘Help!’ shouted the guard. ‘The human boy has escaped!’
‘He’s on the roof!’ said the elf below. It was the one Nikolas had sat opposite at the feast in the village hall. The one with the plaits. Ri-Ri.
Nikolas tried to think. He looked at the elf village below. He saw the reindeer in the field. Then he saw Blitzen, tiny in the distance, nibbling the grass beside the frozen lake.
‘Blitzen!’ he shouted at the top of his voice, waking up the whole village. ‘Blitzen! Over here! It’s me, Nikolas!’
He then saw a hundred elf guards in black trousers and tunics running quickly out of the village hall, like insects spreading across the snow. He also saw Father Vodol, shouting orders at them from an upstairs window. Although they were small he knew they could run fast. He didn’t have long.
‘Blitzen!’
He imagined he could see Blitzen stopping to look up at him.
‘Blitzen! Help me! You’ve got to help! You can fly, Blitzen! You can fly! The magic that saved us makes reindeer fly! You. Can. Fly!’
It was useless. It was in fact a kind of torture to see that mountain, to know the rest of the world was right there beyond. Desperation flooded through him. Even if Blitzen could have understood him, and even if he did have the potential to fly, it is unlikely that he would be able to do so without believing in magic.
Nikolas saw ten or so guards run into the field and climb on to the backs of the reindeer. One by one, the guards urged their mounts into action, kicking their flanks and steering them up towards the tower roof. Within seconds they were galloping fast through the snowy air.
‘Blitzen!’ he called again, but he could no longer see him. Where was he?
The reindeer and the guards were getting closer to the tower. Shadows in the air. Nikolas sensed a looming dark figure. He could feel him, like a cloud blocking out the sun, getting inside his head, penetrating his mind. Trying to push Nikolas forward, off the roof. And then Father Vodol was actually there, on a reinde
er, leading the charge, his beard flecked with snow and his face purple with rage. He was carrying an axe that Nikolas recognised instantly. Long dark handle and dazzling blade.
‘Your beloved father left this behind!’ shouted Father Vodol, hurling the axe directly at Nikolas who ducked just in time. The axe curved back and landed in Father Vodol’s hand, ready for him to try again, as Donner – the reindeer he was riding – circled around the tower roof.
‘Get away,’ Nikolas said. ‘You have no control over me.’ He closed his eyes – warmth and light pushed away the dark cloud – and then it was happening. He was in the air, rising. For a second it felt like the snow was falling even faster. He blinked his eyes open, and there was Vodol. In an instant Nikolas had crashed back onto the roof, causing some tiles to come loose and slide off and tumble to the earth below. He slid down too until he was hanging off the edge. He looked down. He could see a crowd of tiny, tiny elves had now gathered on the path to watch the commotion far above.
‘Catch the son of Joel the Woodcutter!’ shouted one, an elf girl named Snowflake, with shining white hair.
‘Kill the son of Joel the Woodcutter!’ shouted another, called Picklewick, who was watching the scene through one of his hand-made telescopes and was surprised at his own anger. ‘Crush his bones and use them to season your gingerbread! No outsiders!’
‘No outsiders!’ said Snowflake.
‘No outsiders!’ said everyone.
‘No outsiders! No outsiders! No outsiders!’
Well, actually, not absolutely everyone was shouting this. There was one voice of reason, but it was a very small light voice, yet so clear as a bell the words managed to rise up through the air to Nikolas.
‘Leave him alone!’ It felt beautiful to Nikolas’s ears, and gave him hope, and for a moment his loneliness left him. It was the voice of Little Noosh.