I shrug because I don’t know how to answer that.
“So, we’re headed to the stables, right? Reindeer duty?”
I nod. “And whatever that is, it doesn’t sound like fun.”
CHAPTER 13
Walking into the stables is insane.
There are reindeer. Everywhere. I don’t know what I expected the reindeer stable to look like, but somehow seeing the reindeer makes it feel real. Maybe because they are real animals that exist in our world too, unlike elves and zombies and Christmas magic.
Each animal is in a pen of its own, and there is one large pen in the middle that is full of baby reindeer.
“Don’t know about you, but I’m looking for Rudolph,” Luke whispers in my ear.
“His nose only glows in the fog,” an elf says from behind us. “Red light is better for penetrating fog particles, so he’s perfect for the job. I’m Winter—I’m the reindeer handler.”
Luke and I shake his hand in turn.
“Have you ever worked with reindeer before?” Winter asks.
“What do you think?” Luke snaps.
“There aren’t exactly a lot of reindeer down south,” I say quickly to compensate for Luke’s shortness.
And why am I suddenly calling it down south like the elves do, instead of back home?
Winter nods kindly at me and glares at Luke.
“My little sister would love this. She’s totally obsessed with horses and similar animals. At Christmas I think she gets more excited about Santa’s reindeer than about Santa himself,” I tell him.
“They’re lovely animals,” Winter says. “They might take a little time to warm up to you though. Here.” He produces a bunch of carrots and hands them to me. “Go and feed them a carrot each, that always softens them up.”
He picks up a shovel and holds it out to Luke. “You can start in pen one.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Luke asks.
“Well, they might be lovely animals, but they don’t clean up after themselves. There’s a wheelbarrow by the gate.”
“Ugh.” Luke groans and I can’t help but laugh.
“Don’t get too comfy, Mistletoe. You two can swap jobs later.”
“Oh, I don’t mind staying on carrot-feeding duty.”
“Yes, but Luke has to get to know them too.”
“I’m shovelling up their shit. I already know them more than well enough, thank you very much.”
Winter hoists himself up onto one of the fences and swings his legs as he watches us.
“That’s Prancer,” he says when the first reindeer takes a carrot from me. I stroke his soft furry head gently while he chews the carrot. When he’s done, he snuffles into my hand and licks it.
“He’s looking for more carrots,” Winter says. “Don’t give him any though, Luke can in a minute. The reindeer always get overfed when the reform groups are in.”
“You really do this every year?” I ask.
“Of course.”
“Does it work?”
“Define ‘work’.”
“Do people actually get reformed? Do people really end up leaving here loving Christmas?”
“Look around you,” he says. “You can’t not love Christmas after spending time here.”
“I beg to differ,” Luke mutters.
“Mistletoe, I was told your father came here?” Winter asks.
“So I hear.” I move on to the next reindeer.
“That’s Donner,” Winter says. “Surely your father is living proof that this scheme works?”
I shrug as Donner takes his carrot. “If by living proof you mean he’s a Christmas nut who works as a supermarket Santa and doesn’t see his family until late Christmas Eve because he’s too busy working, then yes, I guess he is.”
“That one’s Cupid,” Winter says when I get to the next reindeer. “There, you have your answer. Clearly our reform scheme works.”
“He named me Mistletoe, for God’s sake. I don’t consider that to be working.”
“But once upon a time, your dad hated Christmas. Then he came here, and now he loves it. Magic, eh?” Winter winks at me.
I roll my eyes and pet Cupid on the head.
“Guess who that one is?” Winter asks when I hand the next reindeer a carrot.
They’re nice animals, but to be honest, they all look the same.
“That’s Rudolph.”
“Really?” I stand back and watch him chewing the carrot. I’m disappointed that his nose isn’t glowing.
“I thought he’d have, like, a penthouse suite of his own or something,” Luke says. “Isn’t he a bit of a diva? He is the most famous, after all.”
“Reindeer pay no mind to media attention.” Winter seemingly misses the fact Luke was joking. “Rudolph is no different to the other reindeer, apart from a glowing nose of course, but he doesn’t get any preferential treatment, and I’d appreciate it if you kept it that way.”
“Oh, and I was just about to ask for his autograph.”
“Reindeer can’t hold pens, Luke.”
I giggle. Even Luke cracks a smile.
He stands up and runs an arm over his sweaty forehead. “I never thought I’d get too hot at the North Pole. This is hard work.”
“That’s why you’re here,” Winter says. “To learn just how much hard work goes into making Christmas run smoothly so perhaps you’ll think twice before you try to ruin it again.”
“People keep missing the point that no one intentionally ruined Christmas. It was an accident,” I say.
“Yes, but I bet neither of you ever thought about the little elves who do the menial jobs like cleaning out the reindeer stalls. All these things contribute to Christmas going off without a hitch.”
“In all fairness, I didn’t think elves existed,” Luke mutters.
“But now you know, maybe you’ll think of the elves and the amount of work that goes into Christmas before you steal someone’s decorations again.”
“All I’ll be thinking of is what disgusting animals reindeer are. Seriously, I’ve never smelt anything so revolting in all my life. And I’ve sat next to Joe on the sofa, so that’s saying something.”
I can’t help but laugh at that. Winter doesn’t look particularly impressed.
“How old are these reindeer?” I pet Rudolph’s head. “I mean, we’ve been hearing these stories for, what, decades now? They don’t look that old.”
“These are direct descendants of the original reindeer. We can’t make reindeer immortal or anything. The average lifespan of a reindeer is only ten to fifteen years. When they pass on, the sleigh-pulling duties are handed down to their offspring. You can see the nursery in the middle here.”
“How old are these ones?”
“These little guys are only a few months old. The reindeer get a bit, shall we say, excited after their Christmas Eve stint and come home with only one thing on their minds. We have a lot of young reindeer by the next Christmas.”
“I’m clearing up their shit,” Luke says. “I don’t want to hear about their bloody mating habits. I’ve had enough of reindeer bodily fluids for one day.”
I crouch down and pet the baby reindeer in the middle pen. They’re much smaller than the adults. Their antlers aren’t fully developed yet and still feel soft and velvety when they headbutt my hands.
“I think it’s time to swap jobs,” Winter says. “Luke, you can play with the reindeer. Mistletoe, you can take over Luke’s job.”
I stand up, ready to clean the pens.
“Nah, it’s okay,” Luke says. “This is a man’s job. I’ll carry on.”
“Luke, you don’t have to,” I protest.
“And I thought chivalry was dead,” Winter says.
“I can do it, Luke.”
He grins at me. “So you’ll owe me one. Go on, you like the reindeer, and I couldn’t get any smellier or sweatier if I tried, so I may as well get on with it.”
The rest of the afternoon is actually quite p
leasant. I’ve never been a fan of big, horsey-type animals, but the reindeer are actually really nice. Winter shows me how to groom their coats and fill up the food and water containers. Luke cleans out the stalls and even he doesn’t complain that much.
When Winter dismisses us, Luke and I walk back to our digs together.
“Thanks for doing that earlier,” I say to him. “The shovelling out, I mean. I could’ve done it.”
“Yeah, but it’s not exactly the nicest job in the world. I was already knee-deep in reindeer crap, there was no need for you to be as well.”
“I wouldn’t have minded.”
He shrugs. “You liked the reindeer. I can’t say I’m overly interested in feeding reindeer carrots, and I didn’t mind doing what I was doing. At least it gave me time to think without bloody elves talking to me constantly.”
“Yeah, they do go on a bit, don’t they?”
“I feel like I’ve had elves twittering on in my ear since we got here.”
I nod.
“Besides, I owed you one for standing up for me at lunch.”
“Oh, forget it. I didn’t do anything.”
“You stood up for me,” he says. “People don’t do that very often. I really appreciate it.”
“Luke, it’s nothing.”
“It’s just nice knowing I have someone on my side. I’m freaking out here. I have no idea where the hell we are, and that git Joe is winding me up something shocking. I hate being at home, but I just want to go back there.”
“Why do you hate—”
“And I stink.” Luke interrupts me before I can ask the question. “I’m going to go for a shower before dinner, so I’ll catch you later, okay?”
I nod as he darts into the building ahead of me.
Clearly he didn’t want to answer that question.
CHAPTER 14
Dinner that night is much the same as it has been every other night. The elves on the piano inside the door kill a different song each meal, and tonight it is “Wonderful Christmastime”, which they sing on repeat while we’re eating, and we’re served mince pies with no option for apple this time and mini gingerbread houses for dessert.
Luke stays close to me and far away from Joe as we trudge through the snowy streets and back to our quarters.
Wenceslas is inside the building behind the desk, he looks up and nods at us as we walk in. Once we’re all inside the common room, the door automatically locks shut behind us.
“Do you think he ever moves?” I ask Luke.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Luke says. “Maybe he doesn’t.”
“If we could get out, I bet we could get past him,” Joe adds. “He must sleep at some point.”
“But this door is locked.”
“If I can find something to use, I could try picking it,” Luke says. “My mates and I have picked a couple of locks before now.”
“Wow, you’re a right little tearaway, aren’t you, Elf Boy?”
“Shut up,” Luke tells Joe.
“I don’t see the point in fighting them,” Emily says. “Besides, they’re magic, aren’t they? Even if we break out, couldn’t they just magic us back like the way they brought us here in the first place?”
“I think we have to try,” Luke says. “We can’t just lie down and die here, we have to fight.”
“Who’s dying?” Hugo asks. “Am I already dead and you’re just not telling me?”
“No one’s dead or dying, Hugo,” Emily tells him.
“It’s just an expression,” Luke says. “Lay down and die is a way of saying giving up.”
“My parents died,” Hugo says.
“Yeah. Sorry, that wasn’t very thoughtful of me,” Luke says.
“Put your foot in it again, Elf Boy.” Joe laughs.
“Leave off, Joe, it’s getting old now,” I say.
“Yeah, you would say that, you’re as much one of them as he is.”
“Shut up, Joe, no one is one of anything,” Luke says angrily. “We’re all as human as you are, although personally I don’t see how you can be called that.”
Joe snorts. “You’re one to talk.”
“Please stop fighting,” Emily says.
“Did anyone see anything today that could help us?” Luke asks to change the subject. “Anything resembling a way out?”
“Nothing,” Joe mutters.
“Us neither,” Hugo says. “There wasn’t much of anything to see.”
“Tinsel did say you could see one of the sides behind the reindeer stables, but Mistletoe and I couldn’t find it.”
“Winter the stable elf was there the whole time and never left us alone,” I add.
“Great,” Luke says. “So far we’ve got nothing. And none of you saw, like, a lot of elves coming from any particular place?”
Everyone shakes their heads.
“Only the dining room after lunch,” Joe quips.
“What we need is to look around, a chance to explore,” Luke says. “But we can’t do that because we have elves on our backs all the bloody time.”
“How do we shake them off?”
“How about behaving?” Emily asks.
She rolls her eyes when everyone looks at her. “Seriously. If we all put our heads down and behave ourselves, maybe they’ll start to trust us and ease up on the constant surveillance a bit.”
“That… sounds viable,” Joe says.
“But I still think even if we do escape they can just magic us right back here,” she adds.
“We won’t know unless we try,” Luke says.
Personally, I don’t know how Luke and Joe are going to stop being at each other’s throats long enough to behave.
CHAPTER 15
Luke clearly doesn’t want to talk about anything personal. He still sticks close to me, but the chatter is mostly moaning about Tinsel and Navi having a go at him at dinner last night.
When our schedules are posted under the door that morning, they’ve divided us up the same as the previous day.
Emily and Hugo are on reindeer duty, and Joe is on his own with Mrs Claus. Poor woman, she doesn’t deserve that. I know Luke is still down because he doesn’t even make a smartass comment about Joe being by himself again.
Luke and I have got Elf and Safety for the morning and Maintenance for the afternoon. Whatever they might be.
“I suppose that’s the elf version of Health and Safety,” Luke says.
Everyone is a bit quiet at breakfast. We get a gingerbread man and a candy cane, and the elves on the piano with a rousing rendition of “The Christmas Song”. Luke makes a show of snapping the limbs off his gingerbread man one by one.
Navidad directs us to the Elf and Safety building, tells us that a poor workman always blames the giraffe in the bathtub and gives Luke a pat on the shoulder as we trudge off through the snow. The building we come to looks a bit like a school, and when we get inside, we discover it actually is a school. Inside the main door is an elf, who takes one look at us and directs us to classroom 2E at the end of the hall. We walk past other classrooms, and when I peek in, I see that the other rooms are full of elf children sitting at desks and listening to an elf teacher who stands at the front of the room.
This is really a school. Like the schools we have at home. The only difference is that they’re all elves.
In a weird way, it makes it seem all the more surreal. This school is just like human schools down south. The elves are just like normal people. They have children, schools, and families. Tinsel and Navidad are married. I wonder if they have any kids? Maybe they go to this school.
I’m jolted out of my thoughts when Luke raps sharply on the door of classroom 2E.
“Come in!” a voice shouts.
We enter to find a bored-looking male elf sitting on top of a desk in front of a classroom full of equally bored-looking elf teenagers.
“Hello,” the elf on the desk says. “I’m Elf Snow. You must be Luke Wyatt and Mistletoe Bell. We’ve been expecting you.”
“Class, these are two members of the latest reform group. These are two people you absolutely don’t want to end up like.”
Oh, thanks a lot, I think.
“How kind of you to say that,” Luke says what I am too shy to voice.
“Every year they send me these bloody reform groups. Never punctual, none of you. The least you could do is be on time.”
“We don’t know our way around as well as you do,” Luke says.
“And whose fault is that?” Snow counters.
“These boots are sodding hard to walk in. They sink into the snow and the toes get stuck. I don’t know how you manage it,” I say. I feel more confident with Luke backing me up.
“Yeah, well, you bloody humans are the size of elephants. You must weigh a tonne.”
“That’s not very nice,” Luke says.
“We elves are tiny and petite. We walk on top of the snow, not sink into it. Besides, safe walking practices are one of the things you are here to learn.”
Luke raises an eyebrow.
Elf Snow looks completely unperturbed. “Take a seat on the end of the second row, please. And no talking to your elf classmates, I don’t want you influencing them with your bad behaviour.”
“You’ve got a bloody nerve,” Luke growls. “You elves have got the worst attitudes out of everyone I’ve ever met, apart from Joe, maybe. You—”
Elf Snow pulls a candy-cane wand from his pocket and points it at Luke. “Take a seat and be quiet or I will make you take a seat and be quiet for the rest of the day. Your choice.”
Luke growls and huffs, but we both shuffle over to the end of the second row and take a seat away from the other elves.
I don’t know what they can do with those wands and I don’t want to find out.
When Snow isn’t looking, I nudge my shoulder against Luke’s. He looks at me with a smile and an eye roll.
“Now then,” Elf Snow says loudly. “As our latest additions have so kindly turned up, let’s get on with it, shall we? Welcome to Elf and Safety class. This is where you will learn the common-sense portion of being an elf. Unfortunately common sense is nowhere near as common as you think it might be, hence why I am stuck in a classroom teaching a bunch of kids who don’t want to know and a pair of morons who hate Christmas.”
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