by Matt Haig
Mary became Mother Christmas automatically because Father Christmas was the Leader of the Elf Council. And Mary became a member of the Elf Council, too. That was why some people were called Mother Something or Father Something. They were members of the Elf Council, which meant they could attend meetings and help to decide things to do with Elfhelm and elf life. Anyone, in theory, could be a member of the Elf Council. It just so happened that a lot of elves never wanted to be, because meetings were known to be boring and to give them rashes. And very itchy rashes at that.
After the talking part of the wedding, there was the food part (a lot of food), and more music, and even more spickle dancing.
Towards the end of the party a grumpy-looking elf with a black beard appeared and wandered through the crowd, scowling at Father Christmas and Mary – or Mother Christmas – and at anyone who seemed to be happy. Which was absolutely everybody in the room apart from the Truth Pixie, who seemed to want Father Christmas to stay on his own (I knew this because I overheard her saying ‘I wish Father Christmas would stay on his own’), so this was a bit of a difficult day for her.
‘Are you having a good time?’ I asked the Truth Pixie innocently.
‘I am having the worst day of my life,’ she responded, before stuffing her face with wedding cake.
The scowling elf was Father Vodol. When Father Christmas raised his glass to make a toast at the end, I watched Father Vodol staring intently at Father Christmas’s cup of cloudberry juice.
‘Dear elves, pixies, humans, reindeer, troll – oh, and you Tomtegubb – thank you all for coming. Today has been very special for me. Like a million Christmas Days all at once. Because I have married the kindest, warmest and funniest person I have ever known – that’s you, Mother Christmas – and I am surrounded by all of you. I would also like to mention someone else in the room.’ That was when he pointed at me. ‘That person there. Amelia Wishart. The girl who saved Christmas. She has taught me a lot. Mostly she has taught me the power of hope. As you know, hope is a kind of magic. And it is now my great hope and belief that Elfhelm will continue to welcome her – and my dear Mary – into our village, as you have done already. Like me, they may look a little different, but I assure you they will add much to life here in Elfhelm.’
‘Here, here,’ said Noosh, now standing next to her great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, Father Topo, and holding her son, Little Mim, in her arms.
‘Absolutely,’ said Father Topo. ‘Elfhelm is more fun if it welcomes everyone. A village full of only elves is as boring as a stocking filled with the same presents.’
‘Well, I am very happy to be here,’ said Mary. ‘And I know Amelia is too. Aren’t you, Amelia?’
The whole hall turned to look at me.
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘I am very happy. It certainly beats a workhouse, I can tell you.’
The elves smiled at me but there was a look of confusion or perhaps it was amusement in their faces. I guess it was because I was different. I was different even to Mary and Father Christmas. There was no drimwickery inside me. Drimwickery is elf magic. A magic that had been used to save the life of Father Christmas when he was a boy, and which he in turn had used to save Mary’s life last Christmas. I couldn’t do the things that elves and Father Christmas and Mary – once she’d completed her drimwick classes – could do. But I didn’t care. Not yet, anyway. I quite liked being different. All my life, in London, I had been invisible. Just another poor scruffy sooty-faced child. It was nice to be looked at. It made me feel a bit special, and I had never felt special before.
And Father Christmas helped me out by saying, ‘So let’s raise our glasses to happiness and friendship! It doesn’t matter who anyone is, or where they have come from, they are here in Elfhelm and we will welcome them.’
Father Vodol, I realised, was still staring at the goblet in Father Christmas’s hand. And, as he stared at it, I saw that goblet begin to tremble and shake, and Father Christmas seemed shocked as he tried to keep hold of it. But it was no good. The goblet whooshed across the room and landed with a loud clank near my feet. I looked down to see pink-orange cloudberry juice spill out.
No one realised it had been Father Vodol, because no one had been watching how intensely he had been staring at Father Christmas.
‘What happened there?’ Mary asked.
‘I have no idea,’ said Father Christmas.
‘It was him,’ I said and pointed to the black-bearded culprit.
The whole hall suddenly went very quiet. Everyone looked a bit worried, including Father Christmas. And then, I started to feel a little worried too. ‘It was Father V—’
But I couldn’t finish my sentence as my mouth was jammed shut. My lips were forced together yet no one was touching them.
It was then I realised: he was doing it.
‘I have no idea what the human girl is talking about,’ said Father Vodol, with a smile. ‘She is clearly mistaken.’
I tried to speak but I couldn’t. I looked at Father Christmas’s and Mary’s troubled faces. I didn’t want to ruin their special day, so I just shrugged and gave a tight-lipped smile.
Father Christmas looked at his now empty hand and at the puddle on the floor beside my feet. He pushed out his bottom lip. ‘Well let’s not cry about spilled juice. We are here to celebrate.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Sleigh Belles, play us another tune.’
The music began again, and elves filled the dancefloor, and there was some rather competitive spickle dancing going on. And I danced too, in a rather unmagical human way, until Father Vodol came and stood right in front of me.
I was a little bit frightened but was determined not to show it. So I said, ‘Do you like dancing?’
And he said, ‘No, I don’t. You see, the trouble is you have to watch your step. And if you put a foot wrong there can be consequences.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t think dancing has to be so serious.’
But then I realised he wasn’t talking about dancing, because he said, ‘I’m not talking about dancing.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m talking about you.’
‘Why do I have to watch my step?’
‘Because your feet are too big.’
‘What? This is precisely how my feet are meant to be. I’m a human.’
‘Exactly.’ His eyes widened. He looked quite mad. ‘You are a human. You do not belong here.’
‘Father Christmas is a human. Mary is a human. Don’t they belong here? All the other elves seem to think so.’
He leaned in closer, so he could speak quietly but still be heard above the music. ‘Oh, you don’t understand the mind of elves. You see, they are very changeable. You take one wrong step and they’ll turn against you. You’ll see. I’ll make sure of it.’
‘I’m not scared of you.’
‘Yet,’ he said. ‘You’re not scared of me yet. Just watch those big feet.’
And then he turned and left, and everyone was too busy to notice that the smile I had been wearing was now gone, replaced with a look of worry. I was so concerned that I had just made an enemy of the nastiest elf in Elfhelm that, for the rest of the evening, I completely forgot I was due to start my new school the very next day.
My First Year at Elf School
lves were small but elf children were smaller. Even though I was technically a child I was quite tall by human-child standards, so I was very tall by elf-child standards.
I was always bumping my head on the school doorways, I could hardly squeeze my legs under the desk, and the seat of the chair seemed to be on the floor. The notepads and the crayons were too small. And the toilets – well, the toilets were just ridiculous.
But I did like it that all the classes had names. There was Frost Class and Gingerbread Class and Sleigh Bell Class, and the oldest elves were in Mistletoe Class. I was in Snowball Class.
I sat next to a smiley elf girl called Twinkle who was good at everything. All the elves were good at everything, but Twinkle especially.
The reason Twinkle was so good at everything was because, even though she was a child, she was actually three hundred and seventy-two years old.
‘Three hundred and seventy-two and a half, actually,’ she told me on the first day. ‘I know that might sound confusing, but what happens to elves is that we grow older and older, and then we stop growing old the moment we reach our perfect age, the age at which we truly know ourselves and will be happy for ever. Most elves generally don’t find out who they are – what makes them happy, what they want to do – until they are quite old.’
I knew this already. For instance, I knew Father Topo was ninety-nine before he stopped ageing. Father Christmas – who is not technically an elf but a drimwicked human – stopped ageing somewhere in his sixties, when he discovered his destiny. But some such as Twinkle find out when they are very young. So Twinkle was eleven and three hundred and seventy-two (and a half) all at the same time.
There were about twenty of us in Snowball Class. As well as Twinkle there was also a tiny but extremely enthusiastic elf called Shortcrust, who was the junior spickle-dance champion, and Snowflake, who was a bit annoying and always laughed at me whenever I made a mistake, which was quite often.
We had different teachers for different subjects but our form teacher was Mother Jingle. She always looked at me with kind eyes, but I couldn’t help thinking she thought I was a big waste of space.
It was she who told me, in my first week, that I wasn’t ready for sleighcraft lessons just yet.
I felt anger boil inside me. It was an anger I hadn’t really felt since the workhouse, and Mr Jeremiah Creeper. ‘But I’ve flown a sleigh before! I flew Father Christmas’s sleigh! The biggest sleigh there is!’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but when people arrive at this school, they have to wait six months before they are allowed to start flying sleighs. Those are Kip’s rules, I’m afraid.’
‘But most people who start at this school are five years old. I’m eleven.’
‘You have lived for eleven years as a human, which is different. Humans aren’t made for flying sleighs.’
And that was the end of it. I had to wait. And in the meantime I had to get on with all the other lessons.
There was maths, with Pi, which was really tricky. You see, elf mathematics is very different to human mathematics. In elf mathematics the best answer isn’t the right one, it’s the most interesting.
‘Amelia, what is two plus two?’ Pi would ask.
‘Four,’ I would say.
And the whole class would burst out laughing. Apart from Twinkle.
‘Twinkle, tell Amelia the answer.’
And Twinkle would sit up straight and say, ‘Snow.’
‘Yes,’ said Pi. ‘Two plus two is snow. Or you could have said feather duvet.’
And then Twinkle would look at me and apologise for being right, which made it worse.
The other subjects were equally tricky.
There was Writing, Singing (my voice wasn’t cheerful enough), Laughing Even When Times Are Tough (a very difficult lesson), Joke Making, Christmas Studies, Spickle Dancing (a disaster), Practical Drimwickery (even more of a disaster, obviously), Gingerbread, General Happiness and Geography.
Columbus – the geography teacher I had met along with Pi that day in the sweet shop – was a lovely elf, and I had high hopes for his lessons. They sounded quite ordinary and human, but of course they weren’t. Elf geography was as crazy as all the other subjects. The whole of the globe, south of Very Big Mountain, was simply called ‘the Human World’. It didn’t matter if it was Finland or Britain or America or China, it was absolutely all the same to elves, and they left it up to Father Christmas – and now Mother Christmas – to plan which route Father Christmas should travel every year.
Everything this side of the mountain, on the other hand, was studied in great detail. These were called the Magic Places. And they included the Elf Territory (which was made up of Elfhelm, and the Wooded Hills, which was more accurately pixie territory, but apparently pixies were terrible at geography and didn’t care very much about the names of things and so none of them objected). The other Magic Places were Troll Valley, the Ice Plains (where Tomtegubbs could often be found), the Hulderlands (home to the Hulder-folk) and the Land of Hills and Holes.
Days and weeks and months went by. Father Christmas came home late a lot of the time, because this was the busiest year for the workshop ever. Mary was also very busy, as she was in charge of Christmas route planning. She had also begun to take drimwickery classes, so she could unleash her magic, but she was finding it quite difficult. Anyway, they both became very preoccupied and I didn’t want to bother them with my problems, so I just whispered my complaints to Captain Soot, who always purred some comfort.
I’ve always been the kind of person who could look after herself. I’ve always had to, really. And, in fact, for most of the year I made the most of it. And a lot of the time I had fun. A lot of fun. Living in Elfhelm was still a lot better than being an orphan in London.
I often went to Twinkle’s house to play elf tennis, which is exactly like normal tennis but with an imaginary ball rather than a real one. This was one elf sport I was good at, and I wished we could have played it at school. Then I would go home and read or bounce on the trampoline or read while bouncing on the trampoline.
Even my lessons weren’t all bad. Twinkle was fun to sit next to and always told great jokes, and Shortcrust would often entertain us with his spickle dancing at playtime. And even on bad days I kept on saying to myself that things would be much better when the sleighcraft lessons happened. But six months went by. Then seven. Then eight. And soon it was December, and it seemed that I might never be allowed to take part in a sleighcraft lesson and would always have to stay by myself in an empty classroom, staring out of the window at the other pupils in my class flying past in sleighs.
It was getting quite close to Christmas when I first spoke to Mary and Father Christmas about it. It was the day I first heard mention of the Land of Hills and Holes.
‘Where is it?’ I asked Columbus.
‘Very far away. The furthest away it is possible to be, within the Magic Places. About a hundred miles east of Troll Valley.’
‘And who lives there?’
The whole class knew the answer, but instead of giggling at me like they normally did they all went very quiet.
‘Some rather dangerous creatures.’
‘What?’
‘Rabbits.’
It was then my turn to laugh. ‘Rabbits? Rabbits aren’t dangerous.’
Columbus nodded wisely. ‘I see. You are thinking about the kind of rabbits you find in the Human World. Little cute hoppy things with big ears. Hop, hop, hop! Father Christmas told me about them. But no, these rabbits are very different. These rabbits are bigger. They stand on their hind legs. And they are’ – he took a moment, swallowed – ‘deadly.’
‘Deadly?’ I couldn’t help but smile. It sounded so ridiculous.
‘He’s serious,’ whispered Twinkle.
‘Yes,’ said Columbus, whose eyebrows lowered in disapproval. ‘And it’s no laughing matter . . . Who can tell Amelia about the rabbits who live in the Land of Hills and Holes?’
Snowflake was first with her hand up.
‘Yes, Snowflake?’
‘Their ruler is the Easter Bunny.’
I stifled a giggle.
‘Correct,’ said Columbus. ‘Their ruler is the Easter Bunny. Everyone knows that. Well, everyone apart from Amelia. Now, anything else?’
Twinkle, inevitably, put up her hand. ‘They have a very big army. There are thousands of them. Tens of thousands. And hundreds of years ago they had battles with trolls and elves. There were the Troll Wars, which they won, and before that, when elves used to live throughout the whole of the Magic Lands, the Rabbit Army fought them and beat them, and took the Land of Hills and Holes for themselves.’
Columbus, as always, looked very pleased with Twinkle. ‘
Exactly. In the very olden days, when the rabbits lived in warrens below the ground, the elves and rabbits lived quite peacefully together. But then one day, when the Easter Bunny took over the army, he had a different idea. He wanted everyone to know about rabbits. Yes, they still kept their warrens to sleep and work in, but they no longer wanted to be scared or to hide away. Especially in summer. They liked the light. They liked the warmth. They wanted to be running free. They wanted to go wherever. Which would have been fine, but they didn’t want anyone but rabbits around them either. They forced the elves out. Well, those elves who made it out alive – which wasn’t many of them.’
‘Oh no,’ I said, ‘how terrible.’
Columbus sighed. ‘Well, it was a very long time ago. And the rabbits keep themselves to themselves and so do we. So there is nothing to worry about.’
‘How can you be sure?’ I asked him.
‘Because he’s the teacher!’ said Twinkle. Everyone laughed as if I was stupid. Still, my head was full of questions and the questions had nowhere to go except out of my mouth.
‘Why is he called the Easter Bunny?’ I asked.
Columbus again pointed at Twinkle. ‘Twinkle, explain why the Easter Bunny is called the Easter Bunny.’
Twinkle took a very deep breath and sat up super-straight. ‘He is called the Easter Bunny because it was Easter when they came out of their burrows. Easter is when things get warmer and lighter, and it was also when the first and last battle between the elves and the rabbits happened.’