Wonderfully Wacky Families

by Jackie French

  ‘But they’re bears,’ said Pa, as though Fuzz was stupid or something. ‘They’re what we’ve come all this way for! Real, proper polar bears!’

  ‘Real, proper polar bears with proper big claws and proper giant teeth!’ urged Fuzz, as the bears now leapt from the nearest ice floe to the shore. ‘Pa, we have to run!’

  Pa shook his head. ‘Boy, haven’t you learnt anything about polar bears in your time at the zoo? If you run from a polar bear it’ll chase you! No, our best bet is to stand totally still. To look as unthreatening as we can.’

  ‘That won’t be hard,’ muttered Fuzz. ‘Me threaten a polar bear? Huh!’

  ‘Don’t meet their eyes or they’ll think it’s a challenge,’ whispered Pa as the bears loped towards them. ‘Don’t smile at them either. Bears think a smile is a challenge too.’

  ‘Why would I want to smile at them?’ hissed Fuzz.

  He could hear the bears’ paws rasp on the snow now. Their fur looked longer than his and Pa’s. And their claws looked very long indeed.

  Would they really think that he and Pa were polar bears? Or would they leap onto them and…?

  The bears were very close now, and ranged from surprisingly small to the biggest, shaggiest bear he’d ever seen.

  The big bear stopped, about a metre away from Fuzz and Pa. It leant forward and it sniffed the air.

  Fuzz stayed as still as he could. He stared downwards hoping his lips wouldn’t twitch and the giant bear think he was smiling. Would this be the last thing he ever saw, he wondered? A pair of feet in a polar bear suit, with a few snowflakes trickling down?

  He could smell the bear’s hot breath. It stank of fish and something else. Something wild and savage.

  I don’t want to die, thought Fuzz. I don’t want Pa to die either! And I wish I’d never even heard of polar bears!

  ‘Grrr,’ said the first bear.

  ‘I think it’s asking us something,’ hissed Pa.

  ‘Too bad we don’t speak bear then!’ Fuzz hissed back still staring at his feet.

  ‘Grr? Grr?’

  Fuzz and Pa were silent.

  ‘Um,’ said the bear. Fuzz looked up, startled. Had the bear really said ‘Um’? Maybe ‘Um’ was the noise bears made just before they savaged you with claws and teeth.

  The big bear looked at the other bears, shrugged, then turned back to Pa and Fuzz. ‘Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Parlez-vous français? Do you speak English?’

  ‘W…what! cried Fuzz. ‘I didn’t know that bears talked!’

  The bear stared at him. ‘What’s with this cub?’ he demanded. ‘Is he dumb or something? How does he think we speak to each other if we can’t talk?’ He held out a paw to Pa. ‘Pleased to meet you,’ he added. ‘My name is Ruff. This is Tuff, Gruff, Muffie, Buffie, Wuffie and Short Stuff.’

  ‘Hi,’ squeaked Short Stuff. ‘Like a nice fishie?’

  ‘Er…not right now, thanks. Er…hi.’ Pa shook the big bear’s paw. He sounded a bit flabbergasted. ‘I’m, er, Puff. And this is my grandson, er, Fluff.’

  ‘No, I’m not,’ said Fuzz. ‘My name’s Fuzz.’

  ‘These cubs,’ sighed Pa. ‘The names they come up with!’

  Ruff nodded sympathetically. ‘My grandcubs are just the same. One of them’s calling himself George! What sort of name is that for a polar bear? Wonderful that you bears could join us, anyhow. We certainly need every bear we can get!’

  ‘Er, why?’ asked Fuzz. ‘Are you fishing or something?’

  ‘Fishing?’ The bears roared with laughter, except for Short Stuff, who giggled.

  ‘That grandson of yours is a joker, isn’t he?’ roared Tuff. ‘You’re heading over to the elves too, of course, aren’t you?’

  ‘Oh, of course,’ said Pa. ‘We’d love to come with you!’

  ‘Then you can come with us. We need lots of bears to show those elves we mean business!’ said Tuff.

  Fuzz blinked. Elves? Surely he’d misheard. There was no such thing as elves! ‘We need to get back to our cruise ship! We’re just here by accident and…’ began Fuzz.

  ‘Just ignore the boy!’ bellowed Pa. ‘It’s another of his jokes! Ha, ha, ha! Imagine a bear on a cruise ship!’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha!’ echoed the bears.

  ‘What a joke!’ roared Tuff. ‘Hey, did you hear the one about the elf who had to lift up Muffie?’

  ‘No. What?’ said Pa.

  ‘He could hardly bear her! Get it? Ha, ha, ha!’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha,’ said Pa. It was hard to see his expression in the bear suit, but Fuzz thought he sounded as happy as a bee in a honey jar. ‘We’ll join in anything you lot are doing.’

  ‘But, Pa,’ began Fuzz.

  Tuff grinned. ‘Good to have you with us, you two!’ he boomed. ‘Off we go!’

  Fuzz gulped. Stranded in the Arctic! Their cruise ship vanished out to sea! Trapped with a mob of bears! How much worse could things get?

  Just then something soft and cold landed on his nose.

  It had started to snow.

  ‘Mummy, Mummy, Mummy!’ Short Stuff pulled on Muffie’s paws. ‘I’m hungry!’

  ‘You’re always hungry,’ growled Tuff.

  Short Stuff stamped his paw. ‘I want a fishie! A big fishie! I wanna, wanna, wanna fishie now!’

  ‘Shh!’ hissed Tuff. ‘Behave yourself in front of our visitors. Excuse him,’ he added to Pa and Fuzz. ‘But you know how cubs get. We have come a long way today. And he’s hungry…’

  ‘That’s quite all right,’ said Pa, beaming. ‘I’m a bit peckish myself.’

  ‘No!’ hissed Fuzz. ‘Pa! What are you saying? You really don’t want to eat with the bears! Shhh!’

  Buffie smiled at them kindly. ‘There’s just time for a nice fish each before we set out!’ she said.

  Fuzz stepped back. ‘Um, thank you but I’m not hungry…’

  ‘Careful!’ cried Muffie. Her paw shot out and grabbed Fuzz. For a moment he thought she was going to bite him. Those claws were enormous! And so were her teeth. Her breath smelled like a fishy garbage bin, too. But all she did was pull him back from the edge of the ice. ‘You be careful,’ she warned him as she let him go. ‘You might have gone through the ice there! The ice edges are treacherous these days, what with all this global warming stuff.’

  ‘Er, global warming?’ squeaked Fuzz.

  ‘Don’t you know about global warming?’ Buffie replied. ‘The whole planet is getting hotter and one day all the ice in the polar regions will melt. Some of these icebergs are already starting to go. The ice is much thinner now. We polar bears have to be careful about where we step.’

  Short Stuff tugged at her fur. ‘I want my fishie! Wanna, wanna, wanna fishie now!’

  Buffie sighed. ‘Well, get it yourself! You’re a big bear now! And make sure you get enough for our new friends,’ she added.

  ‘All right.’ Short Stuff stepped over to the edge of the ice and knelt down, carefully avoiding the thin bit that Fuzz had nearly stepped on. He stared at the water for a moment, then whoosh! His paw darted down and brought up a fish.

  Fuzz gulped. It was a big fish! A very big fish! But no one seemed to be mentioning sushi…

  ‘That’s a good cub!’ cried Tuff. ‘Now the first fish is for our guests,’ he added, handing the flapping fish over to Pa.

  Fuzz stared at Pa. How was he going to get out of this one? Surely even Pa wouldn’t eat a live fish.

  The fish wriggled and squirmed frantically. It was a very live fish…

  ‘Well, er, um,’ said Pa, staring at the fish as it flapped between his paws.

  It was snowing even harder now. It was difficult to see the bears. Their white coats almost vanished in the snow.

  Suddenly Fuzz heard a ‘Plop!’ and knew that the fish had flapped its way back into the water. But luckily the falling snow meant that none of the other bears had noticed the fish escape.

  He couldn’t see the edge of the ice now. Even his eyelashes were weighed down with snow. There was no way he and Pa cou
ld survive in a blizzard, thought Fuzz desperately. They had to get help! They had to get to shelter!

  Fuzz peered through the snow at Pa. At least these bears didn’t seem too aggressive. Surely they wouldn’t rip them to pieces if they found out they were human! Maybe the bears might know where there were other humans—nice friendly humans. Maybe that’s who they meant when they mentioned ‘elves’, he thought. A kind, welcoming Mr and Mrs Elf with a big warm house and a telephone to call for help and…

  The snow was so thick now he could hardly see his own paws. ‘Look, I think we ought to explain…’ he began.

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  ‘Can you hear something?’ interrupted Gruff, holding a paw up to his ear.

  ‘Bells!’ growled Tuff.

  ‘It’s the elves!’ yelled Muffie. ‘The elves are coming!’

  Fuzz strained to hear. Yes, there was that jingling sound again, right above them…and a swooshing sound too, as though something big was flying overhead.

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  Thud!

  Something landed in the snow behind them. Fuzz turned around quickly. But the blizzard was too thick to see what it was.

  ‘Stop right there, you bears!’ yelled a voice. ‘You’re all under arrest!’

  CHAPTER 9

  The Elf Policeman

  ‘Under arrest! They can’t do that to us!’ growled Tuff.

  ‘Now you just listen to us!’ boomed Gruff. ‘We have something to say to you!’

  ‘Yeah!’ cried Muffie.

  ‘Silence!’ yelled the voice. ‘No talking! You’re all coming with me!’

  ‘No we’re not!’

  ‘Yes, you are!’

  ‘We’ll run away!’ squeaked Short Stuff. ‘You’ll never find us in the blizzard.’ The little bear grabbed Pa’s paw. Pa grabbed Fuzz’s paw too and began to lumber away through the snow.

  ‘No!’ yelled Fuzz, wrenching his paw from Pa’s grip. ‘Pa! Come back! We can’t go running off into the blizzard! We’ll get lost! We’ll freeze to death!’

  ‘Come on, boy!’ boomed Pa’s voice. ‘We have to stay with the bears!’

  Fuzz stared through the whiteness. Which direction had Pa’s voice come from? Oh no! Where was he? How did you find a white bear in a snowstorm?

  ‘Pa!’ he yelled in fear, just as a rope flew through the air above him. ‘P…grrroopppp…’ he cried, as a noose slid over his

  shoulders and down to his waist.

  Trapped! For the second time in one day…‘Hey, stop that!’ he shouted.

  He fought desperately but the noose just tightened around him, pinning his arms against his body.

  ‘Got you!’ yelled the voice he’d heard before.

  ‘Pa!’ Fuzz screamed. ‘Pa! Help me!’

  ‘It’s all right, boy!’ Pa called through the snowstorm. ‘I’ll rescue you! Just hold on!’

  ‘Aha!’ yelled the voice from somewhere near Fuzz’s knees. ‘You’re not getting away now!’

  Suddenly Fuzz felt himself lifted from below. He peered around. ‘Pa?’ he called hopefully. But Pa was nowhere to be seen.

  Had he been kidnapped by an invisible snow ghost?

  ‘Down here, bear,’ said the voice.

  Fuzz looked down. A small…thing…glared up at him through the snow, its arms wrapped around his legs as it carried him across the whiteness.

  It looked like a man, but was only as high as his waist. It had red trousers and a green shirt and a tiny red cap on its head, with the word ‘Pliceman’ on it. It had pointed ears and…

  ‘You’re an elf!’ cried Fuzz.

  ‘Congratulations. Give the bear a fish,’ puffed the elf. ‘Yeah, I’m an elf. And you know what else I am?’

  Fuzz shook his head.

  The elf pointed to the word on his head. ‘What does that say, bear?’

  ‘Um, “pliceman”,’ said Fuzz. ‘Er, don’t you mean policeman?’

  ‘That’s what it says!’ said the elf. He sounded annoyed. ‘Actually I’m a police elf! The police elf for this whole district. And you’re one polar bear who isn’t going to cause any more trouble! It’s off to jail for you!’

  ‘Jail? But I haven’t done anything! And I’m not even a polar bear!’ protested Fuzz. ‘I’m a kid!’

  ‘A likely story,’ sneered the elf, carrying him with surprising ease for someone so small. ‘What’s big and white and furry and found near the North Pole? Answer: a polar bear.’

  ‘I’m just wearing a polar bear suit!’ shouted Fuzz. ‘And I wasn’t doing anything wrong!’ he pleaded.

  The elf looked startled. He peered up at Fuzz, then frowned as though he was trying to think and not finding it easy. ‘If you’re really a kid,’ he said at last, ‘you can take that fur off.’

  ‘How can I?’ cried Fuzz. ‘You’ve lassoed me!’

  ‘Oh. Er. Right,’ said the elf. ‘I forgot about that.’

  ‘Just put me down and let me loose,’ begged Fuzz. ‘And I’ll prove I’m not a bear. Please! I have to get back to my Pa!’

  ‘Well, all right,’ said the elf doubtfully. ‘But if I find out you’re lying…’ He left the threat unsaid.

  Whump. The elf dumped him down in the snow. ‘Right, bear,’ he ordered, as he loosened the rope, ‘you have five seconds to take off your fur.’

  ‘Fine!’ cried Fuzz. He pulled his arms out of the rope and tugged at the velcro on his suit.

  Nothing happened.

  He tugged again. It was stuck! ‘I…I can’t open it!’ he gasped.

  ‘Ha! I said you were a polar bear,’ said the elf. ‘Bears can’t take their coats off so you must be a bear!’

  ‘It must be frozen shut!’ cried Fuzz.

  ‘Oh, no, you don’t. You don’t trick me like that again,’ said the elf. ‘Right, bear.’

  The little man grabbed Fuzz around the knees and pulled the rope tight again, trapping his arms close to his body.

  ‘Let me go! Let me go!’ yelled Fuzz. He tried to kick his legs out of the elf’s grip. But the little man held him tight. Fuzz struggled as he was carried a little further through the blizzard, then dumped like a school bag on Friday afternoon onto something hard and wooden.

  ‘Oooof!’ cried Fuzz, face down on what felt like a blanket. He struggled to sit upright.

  There was a smaller thump as the elf jumped alongside him. ‘Up, up and away!’ yelled the elf.

  ‘Wha…?’ yelled Fuzz.

  ‘Don’t forget your seat belt!’ the elf added.

  ‘What seat belt? Where am I? Anyway, I can’t fasten any seat belt! My hands are lassoed to my body!’

  ‘Well, I’m not having a savage polar bear sitting next to me unless he’s all tied up!’ said the elf, reaching over to click Fuzz’s seat belt himself. ‘Just don’t fall out! It’s a long way down!’

  ‘Fall? What do you mean…?’

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  There was that sound of tinkling bells again…and…and galloping feet. Suddenly he was flying through the air again!

  Fuzz blinked through the snowflakes hitting his face. Snowflakes? he wondered. The air felt more like someone was throwing millions of frozen peas at him! ‘Where are we? What’s happening?’ he yelled. ‘Helpppp!!!’

  ‘Don’t worry, boy! I’ll save you!’ It was Pa’s voice, almost lost in the blizzard below.

  ‘Pa!’ screamed Fuzz.

  But it was too late. He was spinning higher and higher, up into the snowy sky. The bells jingled even louder.

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  ‘No!’ cried Fuzz. ‘This can’t be happening!’

  But it was true. He was in a flying sleigh, being pulled across the sky.

  CHAPTER 10

  Off with the Flying Reindeer

  It was like being trapped in a Christmas card, thought Fuzz desperately. Elves! Sleighs! Flying reindeer! Things like this just didn’t happen!

  He wiped the snow from his eyes and peered at the sleigh. It was made of
wood, painted red and white with silver trimming. It was snowing too hard to see what was pulling it through the air, but somehow he had a feeling it would be flying reindeer…

  No, he told himself. It can’t be! All that stuff about reindeer and sleighs is just supposed to happen on Christmas eve! They don’t kidnap kids in a blizzard! It’s impossible.

  Just like flying ships were impossible, and talking polar bears and elves…

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  But there was that sound of tinkling bells again.

  ‘Um, it wouldn’t be Rudolf out there pulling the sleigh, would it?’ he asked the elf, then felt a flush creep over his cheeks under his polar bear suit. How dumb would the elf think he was, asking about a character from a Christmas song?

  The elf glanced at him as though he was a lump of doggie doo doo on the footpath. ‘Of course not,’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ said Fuzz, relieved. What had he been thinking of! Sleighs were only pulled by flying reindeer in Christmas songs! And this was mid-July! This sleigh was probably jet propelled or…

  ‘Rudolf doesn’t work on Tuesdays,’ said the elf.

  ‘But sleighs can’t really fly!’ cried Fuzz. ‘And reindeer can’t really fly either!’

  Fuzz felt rather than saw the elf shrug beside him. ‘Hold on, bear,’ he advised him. ‘We’re going to accelerate!’

  ‘I’m not a bear! I’m a boy! And I can’t hold on, you dumb elf! I’m tied up! How do you expect me to hold on? With my bottom?’

  ‘Well just sit tight then. Boy or bear, you won’t bounce very well if you fall out onto the ice. You’ll just go splat,’ said the elf. ‘You’ll be a bear ice cream. Here we go!’

  ‘Oooof!’ cried Fuzz, as the sleigh zoomed upwards through the snow-laden air…

  He wondered if anyone had ever been sleigh-sick before.

  He wondered what colour frozen vomit was, once it had fallen a hundred metres down through a snowy sky.

  He wondered where Pa was and what the girl with green eyes was doing, safe on the cruise ship with its heated swimming pools and warm dining rooms.