But most of all he wondered where on earth they were going now!
Faster and faster they flew. The ice stung his cheeks. The air tasted like a cold ten cent piece.
But at least now they were airborne he didn’t feel so sick. He tried to peer out to see where they were going. The snow was falling so thickly he could hardly see his own hands, much less the elf or the scenery.
Then suddenly the air cleared. They must have flown right through the blizzard, he thought, and out the other side. There was blue sky above, impossibly blue, like someone had washed the sky with window cleaner. And there was snow below, whiter than he’d ever thought it possible for white to be, so bright it hurt his eyes.
And in front…
‘Stop!’ screamed Fuzz. ‘We’re going to hit that mountain!’
‘Yes,’ said the elf happily.
‘But if we hit the mountain we’ll be crushed to tiny pieces!’
‘Will we?’ The elf sounded doubtful. ‘I don’t think we will be. We never have been before.’
‘But…but.’
It was too late. Down, down, down…For the first time in his life he wished he did have fingers on his bum so he could hold onto the seat with his bottom.
Or that he had a tail, a real one that gripped onto things…
Down, down, down…they were going too fast, thought Fuzz desperately. The mountainside was just in front of them now! They were going to crash!
Thoughts flashed through his mind: Did elves need a driving licence before they were allowed to drive a flying sleigh? And what about reindeer? Surely they had to be trained before they were allowed to zoom up in the air? And what about a flight controller, to make sure the sleighs didn’t crash? And…and…
‘Help!’ he shrilled, just as the white ground rose up to meet them…but then magically…it opened, in a great yawning doorway in the side of the mountain, right in front of them.
He could see the reindeer now the snow had cleared. There were only two of them—he supposed that Santa Claus needed more reindeer because he had to lift so many toys.
Fuzz gulped, as the reindeer flew through the door and into a cavern in the snow pulling the sleigh behind them.
The door closed behind them with a rocky clang.
The reindeer slowed down. They were still flying, but now they trotted only a few centimetres above the icy floor.
Fuzz stared at the long passage, leading right into the ice of the mountain. Icy walls, a ghostly blue instead of white. An icy ceiling too, that glowed as if there was sunlight above instead of blizzard. Doorways, made of ice as well, were dimly outlined against the ice walls. A few drips splatted onto the floor.
And it was cold, so his teeth chattered and his nose felt blue inside his polar bear suit. For a moment Fuzz wondered what it was made of. Had a dozen little acrylics died to make his suit? Surely it wasn’t nice warm wool…
And then he stopped wondering and just stared, as the reindeer landed, their hooves clicking on the ice, then pulling to a standstill. Their breath fogged into the cold air. Yet another door opened, next to them.
This doorway was smaller than the first. Fuzz peered inside. ‘Hey, no way!’ he yelled.
‘Yes,’ said the elf. ‘It’s jail for you, bear. In you go! Now!’
CHAPTER 11
The Girl with Green Eyes
It was like a jail in an old western movie, thought Fuzz, struggling desperately against the rope that still held him tight. The same iron-barred cell, the same desk with big sets of keys.
But jails in old movies didn’t have icy floors, or frozen walls that dripped and glowed white and blue. And they didn’t have windows that looked down a frozen mountain onto ice and snow and cold. And they didn’t have a jailer that was a demented elf either.
Now he could see the elf more clearly Fuzz realised just how strange his captor was. His ears were so pointed they looked as if they could pierce a hole in his little red cap. His feet were too big, and so was his nose, and his mouth hung open as though he was wondering whether to sneeze.
‘What do you think?’ asked the elf gesturing towards the cell.
‘Er, about what?’ asked Fuzz.
‘The jail of course! It’s a great jail, isn’t it?’ said the elf proudly.
‘Um, it’s okay,’ said Fuzz. ‘No, I mean it’s a wonderful jail,’ he added quickly, as he saw the elf’s face fall. The last thing he needed to do now was offend his jailer! ‘They’re, um, the prettiest bars I’ve ever seen! And the locks—they’re really cool-looking too!’
‘Thank you,’ said the elf. He sounded pleased. ‘You’re the first person I’ve ever arrested! First bear I mean. Now, if you’d just pad off into that cell.’
‘No, look, I told you there was a mistake…’ began Fuzz. He managed to wriggle one hand out of the ropes and tugged at his suit again. But it was still stuck tight.
‘Come on, bear! No mucking about!’ The elf was stern now.
‘Look,’ said Fuzz, as the elf pushed him over the icy floor towards the cell. ‘I really am a boy! It’s just that the velcro on my polar bear suit has frozen.’
‘Yes, yes,’ muttered the elf. ‘And I suppose that big bear back there was really your old grandpa in disguise…’
‘Exactly!’ cried Fuzz.
‘Huh. Another likely story.’
‘But really, I am…’ began Fuzz.
‘You bears are all alike! Can’t trust a single one of you! You’re all trouble-makers! I knew when I saw that big mob of you heading this way that you were planning something!’
‘But we weren’t!’ cried Fuzz. ‘Or maybe the others were…’ he added honestly.
‘Ha!’ said the elf. ‘Now into the cell and…’
‘No!’ yelled Fuzz. Once he was locked up he’d never find Pa! Which meant that Pa would be stranded out there in the blizzard with only the polar bears—real polar bears, even if they could speak three languages (or four, including bear)—for company. And only live fish to eat! Not even raw fish sushi!
He might die, thought Fuzz. Or at the very least, get really bad indigestion! And Fuzz himself would never get back to his family, or the zoo, or his friends, or school…
He tried to grab the bars of the cell door as he was pushed inside. But the little elf policeman—or pliceman—was too strong for him.
‘Stop struggling, bear,’ he grunted. ‘You’re just making it harder on yourself.’
‘But I’m not a polar bear!’
‘You are so too!’
‘I’m not!’
‘You are!’
‘I’m…’
‘Uncle Dimwit! What on earth is going on?’
The elf stopped trying to push Fuzz into the cell and looked around. Fuzz looked around too. And then, he stared.
It was the girl from the ship!
She was even more gorgeous than he remembered! The same deep green eyes. The same long legs. The same wild blonde hair. The same pointed ears under her green cap…
Pointed ears?
Fuzz felt his mouth drop open. ‘You’re an elf!’
‘Of course I’m an elf,’ said the girl coolly. It was the first time Fuzz had heard her voice, and it was just as beautiful as he’d expected. ‘It’s a statistical probability,’ added the girl, ‘that any person with pointed ears and green eyes has to be an elf.’
‘But…you’re as tall as me!’
‘The girl—or elf—blushed. I can’t help it if I grew! Now, Uncle Dimwit, what are you doing?’
‘Just putting this bear in jail where he belongs, Legsie darling,’ said the elf.
‘Uncle Dimwit? Legsie?’ said Fuzz. ‘And, once more, I’m not a bear, I’m a boy!’
‘You’re a bear!’ yelled the elf.
Legsie sighed. ‘But, Uncle, he isn’t a polar bear.’
‘What?’ Uncle Dimwit blinked at Legsie, then at Fuzz, then back at Legsie. ‘But he looks like a polar bear.’
Legsie put on a special ‘I’m being patient talking to my uncle’ loo
k. ‘Uncle, look at the ratio of nose to jaw. And the shape of his knees. It’s scientifically impossible that this is a polar bear.’
‘What is he then?’ demanded Uncle Dimwit.
‘My hero, of course,’ said Legsie.
CHAPTER 12
A Fuzzy Hero
Fuzz stared at her. Uncle Dimwit stared too.
‘This bear is a hero?’
‘I keep telling you,’ said Legsie patiently, ‘he’s not a polar bear. He’s a human.’
‘Humans are bigger.’ Uncle Dimwit looked him up and down. ‘Heroes are bigger too,’ he added.
Legsie sighed. ‘Not this one. He’s just a kid. I found him when I did a scan on Snoogle.’ She pulled a tiny portable computer device out of her pocket.
‘Snoogle?’ asked Fuzz.
‘It’s like Google, only it’s just for the Arctic. It can show you anything! I snoogled in “hero who can control polar bears” and it came up with a picture of you telling this big polar bear what to do! No one here has ever managed to tell the bears what to do! So I knew you must be a hero!
‘I sneaked onto your cruise ship. There was no sign of the big bear at first but when I snoogled again, you were telling this bear it wasn’t allowed to steal fish and it was apologising to you. And I thought, hey, yes! That’s who we need. He can sort out the problem with our bears! So I brought the ship here.’
‘You made the cruise ship fly? Wow!’ said Fuzz wonderingly. ‘I didn’t know elves could do magic.’
‘Of course it’s not magic,’ said Legsie. She held up her computer again. ‘It’s just superior technology. Just a bit of trans-temporal relocation, plus enough reindeer harnessed together to pull the ship—it only took six reindeer, actually. Think Santa Claus travelling the world in a single night.’
‘Oh,’ said Fuzz.
‘You don’t understand, do you?’ Legsie stared at him. ‘I thought heros would be smarter than that.’
Fuzz shifted awkwardly. ‘Er, what about the flying reindeer? Are they superior technology too? Like, er, genetically engineered or something?’
Legsie blushed. ‘Well, all right, just a little magic too,’ she allowed. Her green eyes narrowed as she frowned. ‘Magic is so-o-o old-fashioned.’
‘What about the talking polar bears?’ asked Fuzz, still more than a little confused.
‘That’s the trouble with using magic,’ admitted Legsie. ‘It leaks out all over the place. Like radiation. The polar bears have been affected by it. So now they can speak…and make trouble. So, I brought you here to deal with it all,’ she finished crisply.
‘Oh,’ said Fuzz.
‘Well,’ said Legsie impatiently. ‘Get on with it.’
‘Get on with what?’
‘Fixing the problem of course. Being a hero.’
‘Um.’ Fuzz wondered what to say next. Here was the most beautiful girl—er, elf—he had ever seen, saying he was her hero. But he wasn’t! He had to tell her the truth, he realised sadly.
‘I’m not a hero.’
‘But I saw you…’
‘It wasn’t a polar bear you saw me talking to. That was just my Pa. He pretends he’s a polar bear. But he’s not really.’
‘Oh.’ Legsie thought for a moment. Her face fell. It was the prettiest face he’d ever seen, Fuzz decided, even if she was looking at him like he was an ice cream that had turned out to be cotton wool instead.
‘So…’ she said slowly. ‘You’re not a hero at all.’
‘Nope,’ said Fuzz apologetically.
‘And you have absolutely no experience making bears behave themselves?’
‘Nope,’ said Fuzz.
‘Oh,’ said Legsie again.
‘I could try to help you with the bears though,’ offered Fuzz, hoping she might smile. ‘I’ve a lot of experience getting my Pa to be sensible. Polar bears can’t be much more trouble than my Pa. Just tell me what the problem is and I’ll…’
Legsie looked him up and down again as though he was pimple pus this time, not even cotton wool. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to send you back where you came from.’
Which was what he wanted, Fuzz told himself—or at least had been what he wanted. He didn’t belong up here in the ice and snow, in a house, er, jail, on top of a mountain with elves and polar bears that talked.
He wanted to go home. Or at least back to the cruise ship.
Didn’t he? A cruise ship without Legsie on it…
‘And my Pa,’ Fuzz reminded them. ‘You have to send him back too.’
‘Can’t,’ said Uncle Dimwit.
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘What!’ Fuzz gulped. He’d been thinking his problems were all solved. ‘Can’t you use that Snoogle thing?’
Legsie wrinkled her nose. It was a gorgeous nose, thought Fuzz. He bet if there was a beauty contest for noses Legsie’s nose would get first prize. ‘Snoogle in what? Polar bear? Do you know how many polar bears there are around here? It’s a statistical improbability that we’d ever come up with the right one.’
‘Oh,’ said Fuzz. ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere till you bring my Pa back!’
Legsie put her hands on her hips. ‘Well, what are we going to do with you then? You’re not a hero. You’re not even a polar bear.’
‘I know what we can do,’ said Uncle Dimwit.
‘What?’
‘Have lunch. I’m hungry,’ Uncle Dimwit said brightly.
Legsie sighed again. It must be hard being so much smarter than everyone else, thought Fuzz. And more beautiful too…
‘All right,’ said Legsie. ‘Let’s have lunch. And then we—I—can think about what we have to do next!’
CHAPTER 13
Lunch with Legsie
A connecting door from the jail opened into a living room. It was made of ice as well—blue ice walls, and a slippery grey ice floor, with big fluffy sofas (made of a cosy red and green cloth, not ice, Fuzz was relieved to see). The rest of the furniture was made of wood, carved like Christmas tree branches. Fairy lights, like the ones Mum and Dad strung about the zoo at Christmas, lit the room.
There was a very Christmasy feel about the place. Even the mats on the shiny ice floor were shaped like Christmas trees.
Fuzz sat at the table (it had a red and green tablecloth) and looked out the window while Legsie and Uncle Dimwit brought out lunch. The window’s strange thick glass was ice as well, he realised, thinner ice than the walls, with just a few drips around the edges. And it was the most incredible view he had ever seen.
The icy sea was a deep rich blue in the distance. It somehow looked colder than any sea he’d ever seen. Here and there giant icebergs poked, white and icy, through the waves.
All the land that he could see was snow covered; great flat plains, with sudden gaps where the icy depths winked green and white. The sky above him was a clear bright blue.
‘Don’t you get scared living so high up here on the mountain?’ he asked Legsie.
Uncle Dimwit put a teapot on the table. It was small and cute and in the shape of a fat Santa Claus with a spout coming out of his hat. ‘This ice house has been in the family for hundreds of years,’ he said proudly. ‘It’s perfectly safe even though it’s made of ice. Elves have always lived in houses made of ice,’ declared Uncle Dimwit.
‘Don’t they ever melt?’ asked Fuzz.
Legsie looked doubtful for a moment. ‘I have been worried about global warming,’ she began. ‘The house has been a bit, well, drippy lately.’
‘Ha! No worries at all,’ said Uncle Dimwit airily. ‘Haven’t I looked after you since your parents died in the blizzard? You’ve always been safe with me!’
Legsie smiled. Her face looked even nicer when she smiled, Fuzz decided.
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve always been safe with you, Uncle Dimwit.’ She put more plates on the table. They were decorated with Christmas trees too, with strands of tinsel around the edges.<
br />
Fuzz looked down at the food. It was…cute, he decided. Tiny elf-sized plates. Tiny sandwiches cut into the shape of Christmas trees, tiny shortbread biscuits in the shape of Santa Claus, tiny chunks of carrot cut into the shape of reindeer, red and green jellies and tiny mince pies in the shape of sleighs.
‘What do you think?’ asked Uncle Dimwit proudly.
‘Er, very cute,’ said Fuzz.
‘Thank you!’ said Uncle Dimwit. He hesitated. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a nice live fish?’
‘No, thanks,’ said Fuzz.
‘I could send the reindeer down to fetch one in a jiffy. A nice big wriggly fish,’ he said temptingly.
‘Absolutely no, thanks,’ said Fuzz again.
Legsie sighed. ‘I told you he isn’t really a polar bear, Uncle Dimwit.’
‘Oh…right. I keep forgetting. Well, tuck in,’ said Uncle Dimwit.
Fuzz took a bite of a Christmas tree vegemite sandwich. Somehow it tasted cute, too. But he was so hungry it didn’t matter. He searched for a topic of conversation.
‘So…um, you’re the policeman around here,’ he said to Uncle Dimwit.
Uncle Dimwit nodded. ‘Of course I used to work in the workshops like all the other elves,’ he added. ‘But then they gave me the job of pliceman.’
‘The workshops?’
‘The toy workshops, of course,’ said Legsie. ‘Don’t you learn anything at school? The workshops where the elves make the Christmas presents. All elves work in the workshops and whistle happy tunes while they tap tap with their little hammers. Except Uncle Dimwit.’
‘Oh, of course. Those workshops,’ said Fuzz. He thought it mightn’t be a good idea to add that he thought they were just a children’s story. ‘So you work there too?’
Legsie sighed again. ‘I go to school of course,’ she said. ‘Don’t kids go to school where you come from?’
‘Well, yes…’ said Fuzz.
‘After all, I’m only 423,’ said Legsie calmly, taking another bite of sleigh-shaped mince pie. ‘It’ll be years till I’m old enough to leave school. How old are you?’
Wonderfully Wacky Families Page 22