“Maybe it’s a . . . ?” Claus held out his hand to her. “A dream?” Anya tweeked his skin hard, and he winced. “No,” he said weakly, shaking his head. “We’re awake.”
They had reached the village gates at last. Claus and Anya climbed down from the sleigh at Dooley’s invitation and followed him, while Boog led the reindeer along behind them.
Beaming proudly, Dooley stopped before the village gates, which were still closed. He raised a hand, ready to begin the official welcoming speech he had been rehearsing for centuries in preparation for this long-awaited moment. Patch’s bright cap popped up behind him, unnoticed, as Dooley opened his mouth.
“My friends, it’s moments like this that make an elf feel humble and proud . . .” Dooley took a deep breath because over the centuries he had thought of quite a lot of things to say on this auspicious occasion; Patch made a face, having heard Dooley speak before. “Proud to have this golden opportunity to welcome—”
Patch stepped forward, seizing Claus and Anya each by an arm, and drawing them aside toward the waiting entrance. “Right this way, folks,” he interrupted smoothly. “Sixty rooms, hot and cold running ice cubes and a southern exposure in every direction.” He grinned congenially at Dooley. Claus and Anya were beginning to shiver; it was far too cold to keep them waiting outside . . . and far too boring.
Dooley closed his mouth with a huff, controlling his indignation out of consideration for their guests. He dutifully opened the great main door as Patch commandeered his visitors and led them toward it. Claus and Anya stopped short as the elves ahead of them began to pass through the doorway. As each elf stepped over the threshold, he suddenly pivoted an entire three hundred and sixty degrees. Claus and Anya looked at each other, their amazement somewhat benumbed by now. No one offered an explanation for the strange behavior, or even seemed to realize how strange it looked. Claus decided it must be a little known superstition. They were at the North Pole, after all. He wondered briefly, as he reached the threshold, whether he should attempt the feat himself. But he was not as light on his feet as he used to be . . . and he was not an elf, after all. He stepped through the doorway in a normal fashion, and Anya followed the same way, smiling strangely.
Claus and Anya had stepped into another world. A panorama of dazzling, dizzying delights filled their eyes as they entered the elves’ home. What had seemed from a distance like no more than a wonderfully detailed hand-carved toy was actually an enormous dwelling for hundreds of elves. Vast rooms stretched away from them in every direction or rose level upon level, all laboriously and lovingly built of hand-hewn logs, their walls decorated with brightly painted toylike sculptures. In spite of its size, the building reminded Claus more than ever of the toys he made . . . the workmanship and the charm of this huge structure filled him with heartfelt admiration.
And yet this was clearly a real, functioning village, with a place for all the necessities of life and work. They stood now in a high-roofed central hall which was large enough to hold two humans and hundreds of elves. On the wall facing them, high above their heads, was a spectacular rainbow-colored cuckoo clock marked, oddly, not with hours but with WINTER, SPRING, SUMMER, and AUTUMN. Off to one side of them was a great stone hearth two stories high, which held the most tremendous bronze cauldron either Claus or Anya had ever seen. Looking away in another direction they saw workbenches, racks of tools, shelves of unfamiliar wooden parts, cloth, and colored yarn. Claus had never seen anything like this before, and he could scarcely begin to imagine what use they could have for so many tools.
But not the least of the remarkable things about this village was the number of its inhabitants. From every corner, from behind benches and doorways, leaning over railings on the stairs and peering eagerly down from the balconies, hundreds of elves gazed back at him. Young and old, bearded and clean-shaven, they all wore the same eye-boggling outfits, striped and polka-dotted and a combination of more colors than Claus had ever dreamed existed. Their faces were alight with fascination to match his own; but more than that, they smiled with undisguised joy, as if they had been waiting all their lives for this moment. He could not for the life of him imagine what it all meant.
Another elf, whose rumpled hair and bright, slightly protruding eyes made Claus think of a good-natured pigeon, stepped forward to greet the new arrivals. Bobbing his head and beaming cheerfully, he cried, “Welcome, welcome! I’m the one called Puffy. We’ve been expecting you.”
Claus barely heard the words, still so overwhelmed with wonder at his surroundings. He nodded absently. “Isn’t this something?” he murmured to Anya, his gaze wandering up into the rafters again. She answered him with a silent nod of her own.
“Did you hear that?” an elf whispered, delighted, from behind a nearby pillar. “He said it was ‘something’!”
A second elf nodded eagerly. “He did, he did!”
“Oh my!” Anya said breathlessly, following Claus’s wandering gaze and finding her voice at last.
Up above them two other elves chortled, hanging over the rail to catch the visitors’ every word. “She said, ‘Oh my’!” one of them gasped. “She likes it, she likes it!”
“She does, she does!” His companion offered a hand, and they shook with hearty congratulations.
Dooley bustled forward to take charge of his awestruck guests once again. Taking them politely by the arm, he began to lead them on into the building for his carefully planned tour. They crossed the wide hall, and he guided them up a winding flight of stairs at the far side. At the top of the stairs was a huge dormitory, where countless tiny wooden beds, each with an elf’s name carved at its foot, lay side by side in long, orderly rows. Warm hand-sewn quilts and goose-feather pillows rested neatly upon each bed. A great open fireplace filled most of one wall, with a warm cheery blaze leaping in its hearth.
“Isn’t this something!” Claus murmured for the dozenth time.
“Is it warm enough for all of them?” Anya asked, looking about the enormous room with the practical eye and kind concern that Claus appreciated so much.
Dooley opened his mouth to reassure her, but before he could utter a word, Patch slid in front of him again, interrupting eagerly. “That’s exactly what I’ve been saying, ma’am. Now I’ve got an idea for a way to heat this entire place using pipes. Pipes? You know?”
Claus and Anya looked at him blankly, just as most of the other elves did.
Patch waved his hands in a circle. “Cylinder thingies.” He raised his eyebrows, as if by sheer willpower he could get them to see what he meant.
Dooley pushed forward again, his patience beginning to wear thin. Officially Patch was only Chief Stablehand, and yet he was always butting into everyone else’s business. Dooley wished the young upstart would learn to control himself and stop being so elfish. “There’s much more to see, folks,” he said briskly, leading Claus and Anya on toward the exit.
He took them back downstairs to see the immense dining hall. At one side, above the orderly rows of tables and benches, the tremendous cauldron they had noticed before hung above its great firepit, its contents steaming and bubbling. A platform had been built around the cauldron’s lip, large enough for six or seven elves to stand on at once. But at the moment only one elf was up there, stirring, walking patiently around and around as he pushed an enormous spoon. He wore a high white hat that looked like a popover instead of the elves’ usual floppy cap; an immaculate white apron and white sleeves protected his clothing from splatters and stains.
“That’s Groot, our head cook,” Dooley said, waving to him.
Groot looked down over the railing at the circle of elves and their two human guests. He smoothed his neatly waxed mustache and pointed beard, smiling graciously, and welcomed them into his domain. “Here, missus,” he called, taking to Anya immediately, as most people did, “you must be cold and hungry.” He ladled a huge spoonful of stew into a bowl and leaned over the railing with it, passing it down to Dooley, who presented it to Anya.
Anya ate a spoonful rather self-consciously, then swallowed. “Oh . . .” she murmured, blinking. “It’s very . . . um . . .” She glanced at Claus.
“Warm?” Dooley suggested.
“Oh, yes, it’s warm, all right.” Anya smiled, wanting desperately not to hurt the feelings of her hosts. Looking up at Groot, she sensed that what she said next would be vitally important to his self-esteem. “And it’s very—”
“Bland?” Patch said with a bit of a smirk.
“Bland, eh?” Groot shouted, his face reddening with anger as his oversensitive ears picked up the insult. “You try cooking for 347 elves and see how much you can do!” His indignation began to rise, and so did his voice. It was clearly an old wound. “Some want salt! Some want spice! Some want barley, some want rice!” He began to stride along the platform again, stirring the cauldron with abrupt, jerky motions that suggested he would rather be using the ladle on Patch.
“I was going to say it’s very good,” Anya called gently. Groot stopped stirring abruptly and looked down at her again. He smiled, and his expression said that his heart was hers for life. Anya glanced at Patch with a smile that was warm, but still a reprimand. He reminded her of some young humans whom she knew, so bright and curious and full of life . . . and so hungry for some recognition of their talent that they sometimes made pests of themselves. With a guilty grin, Patch subsided at her look. Already she couldn’t help taking to this eager young elf more than anyone she had met; but he certainly needed to learn some good manners to match his good intentions.
At last they circled back into the elf village’s great central hall, where a spiral staircase they had not climbed before led upward to an oddly oversized cottage perched like an aerie in the middle of the compound. It was built of the same wood as everything around it, but its lines and form looked much more familiar to Claus and Anya, and it had clearly been constructed on a much larger scale. Dooley stopped before it and stood looking at them expectantly.
“What is it?” Claus asked.
Dooley puffed his chest with pride, spreading his arms, “Your house,” he said. At his words all the elves around him broke into smiles and applause.
“Our house?” Anya raised her hands to her cheeks in disbelief. They had always been as poor as church mice. She had never dreamed of having such a beautiful house of her own . . . even at the North Pole. Why in the world should the elves have made one for Claus and herself, out of everyone in the world? Why in the world had they been brought here? . . . And how long were they expected to stay? She bit her lip and kept silent, telling herself that surely it would all be explained eventually.
Dooley led the wondering couple up the spiral stairs onto a small porch, and opened the solid wooden door of the house. Claus and Anya followed him inside wordlessly. Inside, the cottage was even more pleasant and cozy than Anya had imagined. Two high-backed wooden rocking chairs sat side by side, facing the living room’s large fireplace. The mantel above the fireplace was decorated with small wooden animal figures and carved fir trees. Barrel-shaped storage cabinets were built into the cottage’s walls, and a large kitchen, already with a wooden table and chairs, lay beyond. A separate bedroom with eiderdown quilts on its bed waited behind a door. After the drafty, one-room hut they had always lived in, this seemed to both Anya and Claus as wonderful and spacious as a palace. And, like the rest of the elves’ village, it had a lovingly handcrafted personality.
“Oh, it’s sweet!” Anya said, still hardly daring to believe that all this had been done just for them. She clasped her hands, thinking privately that, wonderful as it was, the cottage still lacked a certain something . . .
“Bit drab, hmmm?” Patch murmured, sidling up to her.
“What?” Anya asked absently.
“Paint it,” Patch whispered. He hid his words behind a raised hand, pretending to yawn.
“Well, it could use some color,” Anya admitted softly, glancing around again and seeing only unadorned wood. She had always liked bright colors, but in her often-bleak village, they had been few and far between. The elves certainly lived in a far more colorful world. Perhaps they could be persuaded to lend a little paint . . . Anya followed Claus to the window at the far side of the room. “And some curtains, maybe?” she added tentatively, thinking of the privacy question.
“How do you like the view?” Puffy asked, encouraging them to look out and down. Below them they saw another vast room, filled with a confusion of seats and tables and a mind-boggling variety of tools. “That’s where we make them,” he said with a grin.
Claus grinned at him. “Make them?” he asked blankly.
Patch winked at Anya, still following unshakably at her side. “He still doesn’t understand, does he?”
She looked down at the grinning elf and shook her head slightly, not understanding any more than her husband did, but not quite daring to say so, since everyone seemed to think she should. She looked back at Claus, who matched her shrug of confusion with his own.
“Well, good people,” Dooley said, oblivious to their obvious puzzlement, “we’ll leave you now to a good night’s sleep.” He smiled, looking as relieved and content as if his own duties had at last been fully discharged.
Claus and Anya looked at each other now with expressions that bordered on panic. After this entire fantastic tour, they still had no idea of why all this was happening to them . . . even though the elves seemed to know, and Dooley clearly seemed to believe that they did, too.
But now even the elves around Dooley were glancing at each other in surprise. Some of them began to whisper among themselves. Patch moved away from Anya, making small half-hidden motions with his hand, hissing through his teeth. “Pssst, pssst!”
“What?” Dooley said, looking at him with a mixture of concern and exasperation.
“You forgot,” Patch said, raising his eyebrows and glancing toward the window. The old elf was really getting embarrassing, he thought to himself.
“Forgot?” Dooley said.
“You know,” Patch urged. “The tunnel!” he whispered. “The tunnel!”
Dooley continued to look at him with complete incomprehension.
Patch formed the last vital clue silently with his lips, and jerked his thumb at the window again. “Toys,” he mouthed. “Toys.”
Dooley’s eyes brightened at last. He nodded briskly, his face reddening, huffing a bit to cover his embarrassment as he took his guests in hand once more. He led them out the front door again and down the steps for the grand finale of their tour.
They went back across the Great Hall once more, stopping this time before a set of massive wooden doors at its far side. Dooley gestured, and two teams of elves hurried forward. Seizing the door handles and each other’s waist, the two chains of elves began to haul the great doors open. The doors were so tremendously high and heavy that it took nine or ten elves pulling together just to swing them outward.
The doors moved ponderously aside, revealing what lay beyond. Claus gasped. He had thought that after all he had seen, nothing more could ever astonish him. He had been wrong.
A great tunnel lay beyond the door, stretching for what seemed like miles, its far end lost from sight. From its walls and ceilings hung toys . . . countless fantastic, brightly painted toys in all shapes and sizes: dolls and wagons and musical instruments, balls and wooden animals, puppets and hoops—every kind of toy that either Claus or Anya had ever seen, and far more besides, dazzling in their profusion. Claus and Anya stood silently side by side, awestruck once again.
“What are they?” Claus whispered at last, his eyes on the countless toys, asking far more than just the question his words expressed.
“Christmas toys,” Dooley said.
Claus nodded and waved his hand. “But what are they doing here?”
Dooley began to smile. “Waiting for you.”
“For me?” Claus said incredulously. “What have I to do with them?”
“You’re going to give them.” Dooley raised his arms in a sweeping gesture. “Deliver them. To the children.”
Anya flushed. “There must be a mistake,” she murmured. “We have no children.”
Dooley smiled again, his face filling with warm understanding. “You do now. You have all the children of the world.”
Claus and Anya stared at him for a long moment. “But how can I deliver so many toys? It would take years,” Claus said. “Even with my reindeer—and they’re plenty fast—I’d never live long enough to give out so many toys.”
Dooley shook his head ruefully. “Still you don’t see it, I guess.” He took a deep breath, and looked up at them again. “Both of you will live forever, just as we will!”
Three
Claus lay beneath the eiderdown quilts of his comfortable new bed in his fine new home, snugly warm in the red-striped flannel nightshirt and cap he had found waiting on a peg by his bedside. He closed his eyes for the hundredth time, but found them wide open and staring into the darkness again before he knew it. He sighed heavily and changed position yet again. What was he, a simple woodcutter, doing in a place like this? Would he and his wife truly live here . . . forever? Would he spend forever carrying toys to children all over the world? . . .
Dooley had finally explained to them how the elves kept watch over everything that went on in the human world that bordered on their own magical, northern land. They were fond of humans, and particularly of children; children were the only ones with the ability to see elves, because their own world still had soft edges of wonder, not the hard edges of fact that their parents’ world had. Because the elves loved children and loved to make things, they had been making toys for human children for centuries, and then leaving them where the children would find them. But as time passed things changed, and it grew more difficult and dangerous for the elves to venture too far into the human world; more and more of the toys they made could not be given out, and were left unused in their storeroom.
Santa Claus The Movie Page 3