Christmas Carol & the Shimmering Elf

by Robert L. Fouch

  Grandmother held up her hand for silence. “None of it matters, because Carol’s going to stop him. And protecting the first Defender is the key. He’ll need convincing.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  She hesitated. “Telling you too much is dangerous, Carol. If you reveal details about the future to those in the past, there could be horrible consequences. You can’t tell them who you are or that you’re my granddaughter.”

  “OK, OK, but what do you mean about the first Defender?”

  Grandmother sighed. “Just know that he could have taken a different path, and I wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Follow Santa’s lead. You’ll find out soon enough. If Santa succeeds like he’s supposed to and you stop your uncle, the Defenders will be formed and all this unpleasantness will go away.” The elf snorted and went back to work on his machine. Ray clenched and unclenched his fists. And my mind churned. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  “How are we going to get home?” I asked Grandmother. The elf had nearly finished preparing his machine, and all the nerves in my body seemed to have found their way to my stomach and twisted themselves into a tight knot. My skin felt clammy, even in the elf’s artificial frozen world.

  “I’ll make him come for you,” she said. “And he will if he wants his family back. When I see that history’s altered, I’ll send him.”

  “I don’t trust him,” I whispered. “What if he changes his mind and we’re stuck?”

  “That’s the chance we’ll have to take, Carol.”

  Grandmother wasn’t one to sugarcoat anything. She knew what Ray and I were getting into, and that it might end badly. I knew, too. From the very beginning, Mr. Winters had warned me of the dangers of becoming a Defender, though probably even he couldn’t have imagined this kind of catastrophe.

  “Ready,” the shimmering elf called. Ray stood and his knees buckled. He looked about as nervous as I felt. I wanted to give him a reassuring hug, but I wouldn’t have known what to say. The elf flipped switches on the machine’s control panel. The knot in my stomach tightened.

  “Hold on,” Grandmother said. “I need to make a portal.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “When things change again, I want to be outside the time continuum.”

  “Oh, yeah.” It was just like when my uncle went back and Grandmother pulled us into a portal to keep us safe from the changes he was making. My head swam. The rules of this game were so confusing.

  Grandmother hugged Ray, patting him lightly on the back. Next, she pulled me close. “Good luck, my dearest,” she whispered. “I have faith in you.”

  “I’m glad you do,” I said, trying to make a joke.

  Her smile disappeared, and she fixed her gaze on me. “I have faith in you,” she repeated, sternly this time.

  I stood straighter and let my smile slip away. “I’ll try my best.”

  “That’s all any of us can do, sweetheart.” She hugged me even tighter.

  The shimmering elf pointed to a metal archway. “When I tell you, run into the time portal.”

  “Explain it to me,” I said, gripping my cane. Its pulsing power reassured me.

  The elf sighed, as if he couldn’t be bothered. But I glared at him. “It’s similar to making a portal, except instead of bringing your hands together to form a circle, you take one hand and make a spiral. Just like with a portal, you focus on something specific where you want to go. Or in this case, when you want to go. You make the spiral over and over, until it cuts through time.”

  “So you’re like a drill,” Ray said.

  “Yes,” the elf responded. “It takes practice, and the older I get the more difficult it becomes. But the machine I built focuses my energy, making it more precise. It’s as if it gets to the core of my power and amplifies it. Once it does, I’m able to drill through time.”

  “OK,” I nodded. “Thank you.”

  The elf grunted and shifted into a child, which kind of freaked me out. Nothing like putting your lives into the hands of a little kid. But I knew the old elf was in there.

  The elf flipped one last switch on the machine and it roared to life, getting louder and louder. He stepped in front of it and waited. A beam shot from the machine and the elf stiffened, as if his body was being filled with energy. The elf then stepped toward the archway. He squeezed his eyes shut. He began making the spiral with his hand, as if he’d done it a thousand times.

  Grandmother stood next to the normal portal she’d made and watched. Her eyes welled up and I had to look away to keep from crying myself. If I failed, we’d never see each other again. The elf’s hand went faster and faster. He shimmered into version after version of himself. He drilled through time, further and further. “Almost,” the elf said through clenched teeth. A massive portal materialized in the archway. But with this portal, I couldn’t see what was on the other side. All I could see was a spinning vortex, like water going down a drain. How brave, or foolish, or desperate the elf must have been to leap into the unknown the first time he tried this. “Now!” the elf yelled.

  I glanced at Grandmother once more. She waved and jumped into her portal. I took Ray’s hand and pulled him along. Together we bolted through the archway, into history.

  For just a moment, I thought the elf had failed. There he stood, shimmering from old to young, right in front of us, in the same house we’d just left. But the artificial winter kingdom was gone, in its place a normal ballroom with dozens of round tables, each surrounded by chairs. And light streamed through the ballroom windows; it was daytime, not night. The third clue was how the elf was dressed. Instead of his drab, standard-issue gray uniform, he wore a brown tweed suit.

  The elf had made a portal and looked poised to flee. “Who are you?” he snapped. “Why are you in my house?”

  Ray promptly barfed on the ballroom floor. I felt wobbly myself. But in my life as a Defender, I had grown accustomed to portal trips, and Pole vaults, and rides on the backs of huge reindeer. I patted Ray’s back as he bent over and puked again. The elf looked at him with disgust.

  “You sent us,” I said hurriedly as the elf leaned toward his escape portal. I chose not to mention the fact that we had forced him to.

  “And why would I do that?” the elf asked. His lip curled into a snarl. It didn’t seem possible, but he was even nastier in the past. He shimmered into his older self.

  “I promised to help find your family.”

  His eyes rounded. The snarl vanished. He let the portal disintegrate. “And how can some freckle-faced brat do what I haven’t been able to?”

  “That’s none of your concern right now,” I snapped. What a nasty piece of work he was! “I’m not doing anything until you help us undo what you’ve done.”

  “What are you talking about? I want you out of my house.”

  I started to argue, just to be obstinate, to give him as hard a time as he was giving us. Grandmother liked to say, “Carol, you’re the most pigheaded elf AND human I’ve ever seen.” But in truth, we didn’t really need this elf’s help, at least not now. Except for a single piece of vital information. “We’ll leave if you tell us one thing.”

  I’ll tell you something all right, he said in his mind, not bothering to hide his thoughts around a couple of humans. I’ll make a portal and drop you in the middle of New York Harbor.

  I smiled, and with every ounce of telepathic power I could muster, I yelled, NO YOU WON’T, YOU BIG JERK!!

  The elf let out a high-pitched shriek and stumbled backward, falling over a table and chairs. I stepped toward him and waved my hands through the air, freezing him where he lay. All except his head. That was a trick I’d picked up from my father during our practices. “Excellent for asking questions,” Dad had explained.

  “You mean for interrogating someone,” I had responded, making him laugh.

  The elf struggled, cursing telepathically and out loud. Ray watched with a
we. “How are you doing that?”

  “I told you I had power,” I said simply, turning back to the elf. “Now, all we want to know is where to find an old friend of yours.”

  “Who?”

  I almost said, “My grandmother,” but caught myself. “Noelle.”

  The elf’s face scrunched in disgust. “She’s no friend.”

  “Whatever,” I snapped. “She lives near here. Where?” The elf glared. “Where?!” I screamed and froze everything but his lips.

  “OK, OK,” the elf shouted as best he could with jaws that didn’t work. “Four blocks away, living with that mixed-breed granddaughter of hers.”

  My heart fluttered. Granddaughter? That would be another of my grandmothers. It would be sooooo cool to meet her, even if I couldn’t tell her who I was.

  “Carol!” Ray shouted. I’d relaxed my grip on the elf. He was back on his feet and had made a portal. I froze him again. “Tell us where,” I said. “Or I’ll leave you like this for a few days.” I didn’t actually have that ability, not unless I sat in the room with him the whole time. But he didn’t know that. “As a matter of fact, you can take us there. I don’t trust you.” I relaxed my hold on the elf but held my cane out as a warning. “If you try anything, I’ll make a portal and drop you in the middle of New York Harbor.” Ray stared at me with eyes wide.

  The elf’s shoulders slumped. He cursed once more for good measure. “Follow me,” he grumbled, and out we went into 1851 New York City.

  CHAPTER 8

  The First Defender

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. Yuck! Like sewage, or rotting meat, or wet garbage. The streets were cobblestone and dotted with muddy-looking puddles. Horses pulling rumbling carriages clip-clopped on the stones. And where there were horses, there were piles of what horses left behind. A man carrying a large pot and a shovel strolled down the street, scooping up the droppings and dumping them into his pot. That was an actual job in 1851? Disgusting!

  As for the non-poop-scooping people on the street, they all stared at us. It was easy to see why. To them, we were dressed like freaks. The women of 1851 wore oversized hats and long dresses with cinched waists, and the men wore suits and roundish-looking hats. But Ray and I had on the gray uniforms of my uncle’s world. “That girl’s wearing bloomers,” one woman said. I had no idea what she was talking about. “Scandalous,” another said. I avoided eye contact, hoping they would leave us to our business.

  Walking down the street, it certainly didn’t feel like New York City. There wasn’t a single skyscraper. Most buildings were wooden and no higher than three or four stories. Houses were built close together, but a few larger ones actually had yards. One structure took up about a fourth of a block and seemed to be a general store. In the windows were boxes of something called Old Man Murray’s All Natural Soap. And next to those were John Godwin’s Miracle Tonic, bottles and bottles of it. “Cures all ails,” the bottle proclaimed, which was a bit hard to believe. Glancing inside the store, I could see baskets full of potatoes, radishes, carrots, and dried beans, along with packages of flour and sugar stacked at least twenty high. I really wanted to go in and check it out, but the elf was hurrying down the street. I had to force myself to look away and not lose track of him.

  On the wall of the general store was pasted a poster that read, MISS JENNY LIND, SWEDISH OPERA SENSATION. PRESENTED BY P.T. BARNUM. I knew that name! Barnum was the guy who founded the famous circus. I wished we had time to go see Miss Jenny Lind. I didn’t know much about opera, but it would be soooooo cool to see a show in 1851. This was a business trip, however. No time for fun.

  We walked for a few blocks, following the nasty elf. He wore a hood to conceal his shimmering, and he glanced back at us repeatedly. I tried to keep my eye on him, figuring he would bolt the first chance he got. But the sights and sounds and smells of the strange new world made that difficult.

  Horse-drawn carriages and wagons were everywhere, and some of the wagons carried goods piled high in the back. Sacks of food, I assumed. Maybe flour. One driver steered a fancy carriage with curtains on the windows. He wore a sharp black suit, a top hat, and white gloves and carried himself with an arrogant grace. I wanted to peek inside to see what sort of rich folks could afford such a fancy carriage and such a fancy driver.

  On the next corner, dirty-faced boys, with berets on their scruffy heads and their tattered pants held up by suspenders, sold newspapers, shoving them toward prospective customers, some of whom pushed the boys away. “Headless body found in Bowery!” one boy screamed, extending the paper toward us. “Get that away from me,” the elf snapped and slapped the paper to the street. The elf’s rudeness barely fazed the boy. He stared at me, studying my clothes, then picked up his paper and hurried to his next customer. “Gruesome discovery in the Bowery!” he shouted. “Headless body!”

  “Why do you have to be so nasty?” I asked, but the elf ignored me. We stopped in front of a drab four-story wooden building painted brown and covered in a dingy film of dirt and grime. The windows on the first floor were so filthy you couldn’t see through them. “Here,” the elf said. I turned to ask which apartment Grandmother lived in, only to see him leap into a portal. He was gone in an instant. Someone on the street screamed. Passersby turned to look. “Witch!” a woman shouted and pointed at me. “She’s a witch!”

  “She made him vanish!” another shouted.

  “Devils!” the first woman yelled. Her face screwed up with fury, as if she spotted witches all the time and the sight of them sent her into a rage. She looked like she was about to leap on me. Her teeth were rotten, and when she got in my face, her breath smelled a lot like what the guy was scooping off the street.

  The crowd pressed toward us. A policeman with a bushy mustache appeared. He wore a crisp blue uniform, along with a tall blue hat held in place by a chinstrap, and he smacked a billy club threateningly against the palm of his hand. Ray backed away. “I think we’d better get out of here,” he muttered.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said. And with a wave of my hand, I froze time. Everything stopped except for me and Ray.

  He stumbled on the step to Grandmother’s building, landing hard on his butt. “How do you do that?” He pulled himself up and stared into the face of the angry policeman. He hesitantly touched the officer’s bushy mustache and jerked his hand away, as if he expected the officer to grab him.

  “Can’t you?” I asked.

  “All I can do is make Pulses.”

  “I’ll teach you sometime,” I said. “Let’s go.” Up the stairs we went, onto a small porch built in front of a single, windowless door. I tried the knob, expecting the door to be locked, but it swung open. After we disappeared inside, I waved my hand to unfreeze time. “Where’d they go?” someone shouted. “They’re witches, I tell you.” “Find them, officer!”

  The policeman stuttered, “I-I-I- . . . just move along!”

  I smiled at Ray in the dim entryway. “You didn’t know you were friends with a witch, did you?” He smiled back, and we stumbled down the hall, the flickering lamps on the walls doing little to illuminate our way.

  “Almost forgot,” Ray said, and he flipped on his flashlight. The fact that there’d be no electricity in 1851 hadn’t occurred to me, and I felt stupid for being surprised. When had Thomas Edison invented the light bulb? When did buildings start having electricity and lights that weren’t candles or burning oil? Grandmother was right. I needed more schooling.

  “Turn that off if you see someone,” I said. “They won’t have a clue what it is and we can’t draw attention to ourselves.”

  Ray flipped the flashlight off when we approached a door to an apartment. I knocked lightly and heard a shuffling of feet and the clatter of a pan from inside. An elderly woman, who was most definitely not my grandmother, opened the door, eyeing us suspiciously. “What do you want?” she barked.

  “We’re looking for someone,” I said. “Noelle. A small woman living with another woman.” I sta
rted to mention her granddaughter but remembered that Noelle wouldn’t age like a human. Maybe her daughter would stay young-looking, too, but she’d be only part elf. My guess was that Earlier Grandmother didn’t look much older than her granddaughter.

  “Top floor, first door,” the woman snapped and slammed the door in our faces.

  “Jeez,” I muttered. “Is everyone mean here?”

  Ray turned the flashlight back on, and we headed up the stairs. Three flights of creaking, groaning stairs later, we stood outside of Grandmother’s apartment. The door was an ordinary brown and needed paint. There was no number and I wondered vaguely how they received their mail. I started to knock but then dropped my hand to my side. I was trembling.

  “What’s wrong?” Ray asked.

  “She won’t know me.”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Well, you know her and you know she’s a good person, or, um, elf. She’ll help us. That’s all that matters.”

  “Yeah,” I said, even though that wasn’t all that mattered to me. Having someone I love not recognize me mattered. The thought of not being able to tell her who I was also mattered. I knocked, trying to still my shaking hand. Ray rocked from side to side, looking nervous despite his reassurances.

  When the door opened, I couldn’t move. It was as if someone froze me. My mouth opened, but no sound came out. Then I started crying. I couldn’t help it. The woman who stared back at me was not my mother. She was NOT my mother. But it was as if my mother stood before me, back from the dead, conjured from the few fuzzy memories I had of her. I saw every feature of Mom in this woman’s face. Her hair was a golden blonde with hints of silver. Her cheeks were lightly freckled and her skin seemed to glow. She had the perfect little round nose I’d stared at for so many hours in the few pictures I had of Mom. I couldn’t stop crying. And this woman, a stranger to me, she did the most amazing thing. “Oh, honey, what’s wrong?” she asked and pulled me into a hug, a miraculous embrace. And the tears poured out of me.