by Katie Penryn
I hastened across to join Felix. He scanned away from the building while I looked towards the doors. Santa climbed into his sleigh and clicked his tongue. Rudolf rose into the air first, followed by the four pairs of reindeer in harness. Last to leave the floor was the heavy sleigh. Santa held his magic rig at the hover for a few seconds while he lined the sleigh up with the doors, then with a great whoosh it swept out into the open air with Santa’s head clearing the top of the doorway by an inch.
I climbed onto Felix’s back and he shrugged his leopard’s shoulders to boost me up onto Rudolf. We were ready for the next 180 degrees of Santa’s journey around the world.
“Ho, ho, ho!” cried Santa.
Off we soared up into the night sky until Sam was a tiny little figure way below us in the snow.
Chapter 9
For the rest of the night we flew up and down the degrees of longitude, landing on roofs of all shapes and sizes, visiting families, orphanages, hospitals and juvenile detention centers. Every time we returned to the Arctic Circle we filled up with presents in Lapland. Felix did his part fending off repeated assaults by the invisible Snarl as it swooped in from unexpected directions. Over Nova Scotia, we ran into a heavy sea fog and would have been in difficulty without Rudolf’s red nose to show us the way.
Santa had to drive his team hard to make up for the time we’d lost. With all the magic in the world we couldn’t slow the rotation of the Earth. By half past four in the morning we were flying northwards, returning from our last trip. The Snarl hadn’t attacked for several degrees of latitude now. We’d covered the stretch of the Pacific where the International Date Line zigzags round far flung islands and were approaching the most westerly offshoots of Alaska, thinking ourselves home safe when the unthinkable happened.
Felix had been flying along our left flank. He suddenly tucked in his legs, swung around until he was pointing south and performed a perfect victory roll with his long tail streaming out behind him. He flew behind the sleigh and executed another victory roll along our right flank. And that did it.
Felix
To this day, I don’t know what got into me. A mixture of self-congratulatory over confidence that our mission had ended successfully with all the presents delivered and relief that the Snarl had given up?
But, of course, it hadn’t. I still can’t work out whether it found my victory rolls provocative — a challenge it couldn’t refuse — or whether it was my widdershins flight around the sleigh that called down the evil again. Looking back, I should have realized how dangerous any anti-clockwise movement would be. Gwinny had warned us that all magic had to be performed clockwise, but I hadn’t wanted to fly across the front of the reindeer in case I startled them and made Rudolf throw Penzi. I paid dearly for my mistake.
The Snarl came out of nowhere, drenching me in its foul vapors. I tried to avoid it, but it dived on me with a great flapping of invisible wings and an earsplitting screech. It assailed me with its full arsenal: claws, tentacles, fangs, barbed tails, beaks; all of which I only sensed. I fought desperately knowing that if it won this battle, there would never be another Christmas for the children of the world, but I’d been caught unawares and was exhausted.
Some part of its fearful anatomy seized me by my scruff. I struggled to withstand the involuntary reflex built into all cats to curl up and submit to being carried, but my muscles wouldn’t respond and I hung slackly in its grasp. The monster soared higher and higher, spiraling upwards towards the clouds. The coastline appeared below me and as the Snarl flew ever higher, Mount Hesperus came into view. The air at nine thousand feet was breathable by me in my snow leopard form, but the situation was dire. I began to struggle against my cub like behavior. I wriggled and shrugged in an effort to dislodge the Snarl’s hold on me. To no avail. On the Snarl climbed. In the distance over to my right, the peak of Mount Denali, the highest mountain in the Alaska Range rose above us, its snowy slopes tinged pink as the Earth turned towards the sun. My breath was coming harsh and disjointed, my lungs straining for oxygen. Seventeen thousand feet is the natural habitat of snow leopards. Anything over that would kill me and leave the Snarl free to attack Santa’s sleigh. I had to do something. As a last resort I did what many prey animals do, I feigned death. I ceased fighting back and let myself go limp. I slowed my breathing down as much as I dared without passing out.
The Snarl let out a jubilant screech and dropped me. Down I plummeted, falling fast through many thousands of feet until I got my wits about me again. I splayed out my legs and my tail and summoned up my faith in the magic of the High Council of the Guild of White Witches. They had told me I could fly for this one night, so fly I did. My descent slowed as the magic began to work against the power of gravity. Below me growing larger by the second, Santa’s sleigh was flying round in slow circles, marking the spot where I’d disappeared. I spiraled down until I was alongside Penzi and Rudolf once more.
The reindeers gave me little grunts of welcome. Penzi let go of Rudolf’s reins to clap her hands. Santa called out, “Homeward bound. Ho, ho, ho!” and clicked his team onwards.
The Snarl’s plan to kill me by depriving me of oxygen had failed and it had flown off. A problem for another day, I said to myself as I gulped down the life-giving oxygen all around me. Santa turned his team to the east to set Penzi and me back down in Beaucoup-sur-Mer for our Christmas dinner with the mayor. All’s well that ends well, but I had reckoned without the evil power behind the Snarl.
The Snarl dive-bombed me as we were flying over the Atlantic. Although its attack was unexpected, I was familiar with its tactics by now. As I fought it, I twisted and squirmed this way and that doing anything to stop it taking hold of my scruff again. This time I launched the offensive. Waiting until I sensed it swooping about below me, I jumped down through the air landing on it with all the force of my four mighty paws. My long claws latched onto something, I know not what part of the beast, and I held on with all my strength.
Then I took a risk. I shut down my magic ability to fly. Down we fell, spiraling out of control as gravity took us down to the ocean. The Snarl strove to fight the force of the earth’s pull and gain height but my weight was too much for it. We plunged into the icy cold waves of the Northern Atlantic. Down we sank our combined weight and the force of our fall taking us through several fathoms. I’d taken a deep breath as we hit the water and I held it for my life’s sake. As our dive tailed off, I slowly let my breath out to achieve neutral buoyancy and hung there deep in the sea until I felt the Snarl collapse in on itself. When I was sure there was no life left in it, I kicked sharply with my hind legs and rose up through the water. We, leopards, are strong swimmers. I paddled about until my lungs had recovered, then I summoned up the magic power to fly again and spiraled upwards matching the route of my descent.
“The Snarl is dead,” I shouted out as Santa’s sleigh came into view.
All the way back to France, the reindeer sang, “The Snarl is dead. Long live Felix.”
Santa insisted I join him and Jimbo. Penzi hadn’t come prepared with her broomstick, and so she couldn’t fly to the sleigh. She unharnessed Rudolf who carried her over to us and she climbed in. Rudolf flew alongside us all the way back to the mayor’s house.
Chapter 10
Two things come to mind about that last leg of the journey. I asked Felix how he’d known what to do to kill the Snarl.
“I didn’t know. I guessed and took a risk. It was all to do with oxygen. The Snarl tried to fly me so high I’d die from oxygen starvation. It could breathe at those heights. That was its biological specialty. I thought it unlikely it had a second one. So I dragged it down under the sea.”
“So you were lucky that it worked?”
Felix answered with a chuckle. “Absolument, as the mayor would say. When you’re in a situation like that, anything you try is better than accepting death.”
The second thing was to do with a remark Santa had made before we started off on our delivery round. It had n
iggled me all night. He’d said he and his reindeer didn’t visit all children on Christmas Eve. When I’d asked him what he meant, he said he’d tell me later. So I asked him what he’d meant.
“I don’t mean the children who celebrate Christmas on other dates, such as Boxing Day or Twelfth Night for example. And I don’t mean children whose families don’t celebrate Christmas but celebrate other religious or seasonal holidays. I mean children who never receive gifts at all because they’re living in poverty or caught up in situations beyond their control. You must have noticed we didn’t visit all children tonight?”
“Yes, I did, but I suppose I’m conditioned to accept that some children miss out at Christmas.”
Santa frowned down at me. “Is that right?”
“Of course not. Anyway, why don’t you take presents to every child? You’re the one with the toy factories.” I said rather more sharply than I should have done.
“It’s simple economics. Parents with enough money buy shares in my toy factories. Their children receive presents as a dividend. If a child has no parents or his or her parents are too poor, I can’t deliver a present to them. There are many aid and charitable agencies who help to fill in the gap, but it’s nowhere near enough.”
We’d over flown many areas without stopping to make a delivery: refugee camps, war zones, inner cities and impoverished villages. What Santa said was true. Thousands of children would go without a present on Christmas morning.
“It’s an impossible situation, Santa. What can an ordinary person do about it?”
Santa smiled and looked at Felix.
“Felix?”
“We could teach our children to give as well as receive.”
“Good answer. What else can we do, Penzi?”
“The answer’s obvious: raise the standard of living in the world, but I don’t see how an ordinary person can do that.”
“As long as the ordinary person accepts that it needs to be done, one day I shall be delivering presents to every child. It’s that hope that gets me up in the morning. Now, you are not to get depressed about this. You have both worked hard tonight to make sure that many of the world’s children have presents tomorrow. That’s a great achievement.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the journey and soon the coast of France lay before us. Santa homed in on the sleepy little town of Beaucoup-sur-Mer and guided his team gently down to the road in front of the mayor’s house. Felix and I said goodbye to the reindeer while Santa gave Jimbo a big hug.
We stood back as Santa called out, “Ho, ho, ho!” He clicked his tongue and the reindeers rose into the air and headed north for Lapland. We watched them till they were out of sight.
Felix sighed. “What a magical night. No one would believe it.”
I looked at the time. “One o’clock. Time to release the forget spell.”
I snapped my fingers and our time was once more in synch with the rest of the town of Beaucoup-sur-Mer.
Felix, Jimbo and I hurried up the drive to find Sam just arriving in our car.
“Merry Christmas,” he said, jumping out to join in a group hug. “Did all the children receive their presents?”
I nodded. “It was fun rescuing Santa, wasn’t it?”
“Fun isn’t the word I’d use, boss,” said Felix. “It was touch and go for a moment there, you know.”
“Felix was awfully brave,” Jimbo said. “You should have seen him fighting the Snarl. That monster was the scariest thing in the world. I hope it’s really dead.”
“Oh, don’t be so dreary, you two. It’s Christmas.”
The four of us linked arms and walked up to the front door to join the Bonhomie family for a French Christmas dinner.
*****
END OF BOOK FIVE
BOOK SIX
THE WITCH WHO FOILED THE PLOT
Chapter 1
Five months without a murder… and counting. Here we were in mid-March with the spring bursting out in our new garden. No sign of evil anywhere. Birds singing, trees burgeoning into leaf and bees busy with the first flowers. Over the winter Beaucoup-sur-Mer had recovered from the spate of killings that had rocked our little French seaside town in the late summer and early autumn after our arrival in our new home at Les Dragons.
Our father’s will had laid down that we had to move from our then home in Notting Hill Gate in London, England, to his second home in France. It had been an unwelcome upheaval for all three of us: for my brother Jimbo, who was only nine and had to start school in France without being able to speak French, for my brother Sam, who at eighteen had wanted to go off and do his thing but now had to stay with the family and help us adapt our lives to living in France, and for me, a new barrister with my first portfolio of clients. The only members of the family who didn’t seem to mind the move were our two German shepherds, Zig and Zag.
Arriving in France, we had come upon our long lost mother Gwinny who had deserted us all seven years previously. Jimbo had been ecstatic; Sam and I less so, forgiveness being good for the soul but hard to come by.
Along the way, the three of us had gained a friend in Felix who’d been sent from the Middle Congo by my father, Sir Archibald Munro, to be my bodyguard. I needed one. The wicked witch doctor of the Wazini back in Africa was out to kill me in revenge against my father’s support of the government there, in their campaign to stamp out the murderous Leopardmen.
Thereby hangs a tale as they say. When delivered at our door in Beaucoup-sur-Mer, Felix was a handsome Savannah cat, but he was a shifter who could morph from cat to leopard to man in any order. He had taken me by surprise the first time I came upon his human form. But as he said, as a supernatural myself it was time I got used to such strange happenings.
After seven months I was coming to terms with finding out I was a white witch. At first I’d been rebellious, thinking all that magic stuff was nonsense. As a barrister with a mind trained to analyze facts and nuances of the law, it took me some time to come to an understanding that I had been called; that using magic in the fight of good against evil was my vocation in life. At first, it had been difficult for me. At twenty-five, I was a late starter and had a lot of catching up to do. Being dyslexic had only added to the difficulty of learning the spells I needed. My father had sent me my mother’s Book of Spells along with his will. Faced with such a vast amount of material to learn, I’d been advised by Felix to tackle the spells as and when they were needed. So far, the High Council of the Guild of White Witches, who monitored my progress, had been happy with that approach. I hadn’t needed to learn a new spell since our adventure at Christmastime when we’d given Santa a helping hand. However, with a performance review due any day from the High Council, I might have to up the pace of my studying.
All this was running through my mind as I sat in the kitchen with Felix having a mid-morning cup of tea and one of my favorite chocolate éclairs.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Felix.
“Shouldn’t it be a Euro or a centime?” I replied.
“Some things don’t translate. Go on. Tell me what’s giving you that far-away look.”
“I was thinking about how far we’ve come since our family moved over here to France. The money spent on the garden is beginning to pay off. Look out of the window as it comes alive with the onset of spring. Jimbo’s doing well at school and will soon speak a more colloquial French than either of us. Life is peaceful at last. That monsoon of evil that swept over Beaucoup-sur-Mer after our arrival here has blown itself out.”
“Sam’s not too happy and you, yourself, still have to find a means of earning a living.”
“Sam’s time will come. This year is giving him a chance to decide what he wants to do with his life. Although the gap year was forced on him by my father’s will, it has been good for Sam.”
“And you, boss? What are you going to do with yourself for the rest of your life?”
“I’ve been giving it a lot of thought recently. Should I stick with a life in the
law, undertake the necessary study to qualify as an advocate in France? The whole philosophy of the law here is so different from the Anglo-Saxon model. I’m not sure I could get my head or my heart around it. Then there’s the antiques business.”
“How about private investigator?” asked Felix with a wink.
I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. “That was forced on me, I didn’t choose it. I don’t want to spend my life peering into the worst aspects of people’s actions.”
“You can’t deny you sought and found justice for the victims.”
I sighed. Felix was right, but it was dirty work even so.
Felix put his hand over mine. “Don’t sweat it, Penzi. It will come to you. There’s no harm in taking a few months off after all the hard years of study you’ve put in while bringing up your two brothers.”
I turned my head to look at Gwinny who was standing at the sink peeling potatoes for lunch. I was sure I’d heard her sniffle.
“Gwinny,” I called out, “Felix wasn’t getting at you.”
She looked over her shoulder at us and wiped her eyes with her spare hand. “Don’t you worry about me. It’s these onions.”
Felix and I exchanged a glance. My mother had been waiting for us in Beaucoup-sur-Mer when we’d arrived the previous summer. She’d been the one to renovate the house for us and since then she’d been living with us, much to Jimbo’s joy. Felix had rebuked me several times in the past for being so unforgiving towards her for the seven years she’d left me to care for my siblings.
She dropped the paring knife in the sink with a splash, pulled out the chair at the end of the table and sat down drying her hands on her apron. She put out a hand to cover mine and Felix’s.
“Penzi, take your time,” she said. “The universe will give you the answer when you’re ready. I wish I could take back the last seven years and start over, but I can’t.”