Candy Canes and Buckets of Blood
Page 27
“Are you criticizing a woman for taking the initiative?” Esther instantly retorted.
“Absolutely not,” said Dave.
There was a lurch as the carriage shaft linking the sleigh to its animal-driven engine came apart. Newton, eyes staring wide at the gaping hole in the front end of the sleigh, scurried back and up to the seat that Santa had recently vacated, to his family.
***
121
Like Bacraut, Guin found her attention drawn to the reindeer leading the sleigh. Scromdir and Bitber, wasn’t it? The looped leather straps holding them together were now freed and the pair were drifting. Scromdir peeling left, Bitber up and to the right. Where those two led, others followed. The lines of reindeer were diverging, the links to the sleigh lost.
“Ni! Ni! Samat!” shouted Bacraut.
“If the reindeer aren’t pulling this thing forward anymore—” said Guin, feeling a lightness within her as the sleigh began a rapid descent.
“Take hold of me,” said Newton.
“No need to panic, dude,” said Dave, hugging the lad.
“Take hold of me!” the boy shouted.
“Flúga áfrass!” Bacraut yelled at the reindeer. “Flúga tigýrðar!”
The reindeer weren’t flying together. The two trains were heading off at forty five degrees to one another. Down the chain of paired zombie reindeer, they split off – Hlager and Gouper, Bultaða and Paugir, and all the others – until the final pair parted. With a wrenching of wood, the carriage shaft splintered.
It was only in that moment that Bacraut recognised the danger of wrapping himself in the reins. As the last reindeer went their separate ways and the two lines pulled in opposite directions, the thick reins tightened.
“Ni!” he shouted. His voice cut off in a gurgle as metres of rein went from coiled to rigid in an instant. He stretched. Coils sliced. The noose around his neck snapped taut. Guin’s eyes involuntarily followed his forcibly ejected head as it literally popped off.
Both teams of reindeer shook as they violently pulled against each other and swooped to move in a vaguely unified direction, utterly separated. The sleigh, engineless, nosedived like a rollercoaster cresting the first drop.
The floor moved beneath them. Guin turned and grabbed her dad.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Hold me!” yelled Newton. “Do it!”
Arms wrapped around chests, a family pressed in close together.
“Flúg!”
***
122
The sun rose. The twisted remains of several crushed containers and the awful cargo they had carried, burned fiercely against a hillside, given extra flame by whatever aviation fuel had still been on board. Crows startled out of their roosts by the explosive crash, circled in the air above. There was no movement around the crash site. Nothing living had crawled away.
To the far south, almost out of sight, dozens of reindeer ran on tirelessly through the sky.
“I wonder where they’ll end up,” said Guin.
“It’s usually birds that fly south for the winter,” said Newton.
Dave inspected himself and his family. They had landed softly in the snowy fields half a mile back from the sleigh crash. “How—?”
“We should be dead,” agreed Esther.
Newton lifted up his jumper. A large quantity of bundled hair poked out. “I got it when I was fixing Blinky. I probably took more than I needed.”
“You stuffed an old man’s beard up your jumper?” said Guin.
“It’s magical.”
“Yeah. Still, it’s a bit…” There didn’t seem to be a word to cover it.
“It’s been a weird night,” nodded Esther.
Dave turned around. “I’m not sure I know where we are.” He blew out his cheeks at a sudden thought. “The car.”
“Underneath an avalanche,” said Esther, patting his shoulder.
“You never liked cars anyway,” Newton pointed out and then thought, “All our luggage!”
Esther pointed in what looked a likely direction to find a main road. “Not much of a Christmas is it, though?” she said.
“Dunno,” said Newton. “Family trip gone horribly wrong. The worst possible accommodation. Flying creatures.”
“People trying to kill them,” added Guin.
“Sounds like the Christmas story to me.”
“Kind of lacking the three wise men and some gifts,” said Esther.
“The mead I bought!” said Dave. “Gone! Man! What I wouldn’t give for a glass of—”
Newton put a hand over his mouth. “No, dude. Don’t even say it.” He looked at Guin. “You lost your toys.”
Guin plucked Tinfoil Tavistock, the only survivor, from her pocket. “I’ll make new ones. I’ve got loads of materials in my bedroom. I’ll show you when we get to our house.”
A look passed between Dave and Esther.
“You kids have surprised me,” smiled Dave. “You’ve changed.” They reached the brow of a hill. Below was a long grey line that might have been a country road.
“I’m thinking about going vegetarian,” said Newton.
“That’s not the change I meant, mate.”
“Sausages.” Newton pulled a face. “They’ve put me right off meat.”
“Oh,” said Esther, surprised but pleased. “No, I think Dave’s right. You have changed.”
“I’m sure it will wear off,” said Guin, feeling the tops of her ears.
“Change for the better,” Esther assured her.
A cool breeze blew in from behind them. The flying reindeer had vanished entirely into the yellow haze of dawn.
“Why do birds fly south for the winter?” asked Newton.
“I don’t know,” said Esther, recognising it as a joke. “Why do birds fly south for the winter?”
“It’s too far to walk.”
Guin groaned. There was a laugh buried in the groan. It was buried deep but it was there all the same.
Newton knew exactly what change his mum was talking about. The worry, the panic, the desperate need to please everyone…
He pulled the bundle of hair out from under his jumper. There was a lot of it but he made sure he gathered together all the remains of Santa’s beard. He held it up until he could feel the breeze tugging at it. Then he let it go.
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