Wonderfully Wacky Families

by Jackie French

  Fuzz gulped. ‘Um, about the same as you,’ he hedged.

  ‘I’m 1299,’ said Uncle Dimwit proudly. ‘It’s my birthday next week! I’ll be 1400!’

  ‘1300, Uncle Dimwit,’ said Legsie kindly.

  ‘What? Oh. Right. Of course. Anyone for another vegemite sandwich?’

  ‘I was thinking…’ said Legsie slowly. ‘We have to find Fuzz’s Pa if we’re to get rid of him.’

  ‘Er, yes, please,’ said Fuzz, though slightly stung by her dismissive air.

  Legsie ignored him. ‘So, where’s the most likely place to find some polar bears these days?’

  ‘Huh,’ said Uncle Dimwit, crunching on a reindeer-shaped bit of carrot. ‘That’s easy. The bears around here are always outside the workshops, making trouble as usual.’

  ‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Fuzz. Legsie and Uncle Dimwit had kept talking about polar bear trouble, he realised, without saying what it was.

  Legsie sighed. ‘The bears want to make toys like the elves, and pull sleighs like the reindeer. They call it “the right to bear toys”.’

  ‘Well, why can’t they?’ asked Fuzz.

  ‘Because bears’ paws are no good for making toys,’ said Legsie crisply. ‘And bears are no good pulling sleighs either. Have you ever seen a mob of bears pull a sleigh?’

  ‘No,’ said Fuzz honestly. He didn’t add that he’d never even seen a sleigh before till today. Except on a Christmas card, of course.

  ‘Bears can’t even fly like reindeer! Which is why we need a hero,’ said Legsie somewhat wistfully. ‘To convince the bears to just be, well, bears! Anyhow, maybe your Pa has gone to the workshops with the other bears.’

  ‘Really?’ said Fuzz. ‘Can we go to the workshops now then? I mean, thanks for lunch and everything,’ he added to Uncle Dimwit, ‘but I really need to find my Pa. He’ll be worried about me.’

  Legsie stood up. ‘I’ll take him down, Uncle Dimwit,’ she said. ‘You stay here. And don’t try arresting any more bears!’ she added firmly.

  ‘Yes, Legsie dear,’ said Uncle Dimwit meekly.

  CHAPTER 14

  Hunting for Bears

  ‘Your uncle is nice,’ said Fuzz, as they walked out through the jail back to the sleigh.

  ‘Yes, he is,’ said Legsie.

  ‘Just a bit, um…’

  ‘Dumb?’ said Legsie.

  ‘Well, yes. A bit,’ said Fuzz.

  ‘A lot,’ said Legsie. ‘But he’s a darling man. It’s not just that he took me in when my parents died. He doesn’t mind me being, well, different either.’

  ‘Different?’

  ‘My height,’ said Legsie. ‘I can’t help being tall. But it’s so-o-o embarrassing!’

  ‘I don’t think you’re too tall at all!’ said Fuzz.

  ‘Have you ever seen an elf as tall as me?’ demanded Legsie.

  ‘You’re the first elf I’ve ever met,’ said Fuzz. ‘Well, the second, if you count Uncle Dimwit. Though I did see you first on the boat…’

  ‘It’s awful being so tall,’ said Legsie sadly. ‘Just so…so ugly!’

  ‘Ugly! I think you’re the most gorgeous girl—I mean elf—in the universe!’ said Fuzz without thinking, then blushed as Legsie stared at him as though she had never really looked at him before.

  ‘Well, you are,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Er, thanks,’ said Legsie. She was blushing too. ‘But Uncle Dimwit is really tolerant in other ways,’ she added, sounding happier with the change of subject. ‘Like I hate making toys. Tap, tap, tap. Whistle, whistle, whistle while you work all day long! I hate whistling, especially when I work! How can you concentrate with all the noise? I so don’t want to be a toy-maker when I leave school! But that’s what every elf is supposed to be!’

  ‘Your Uncle Dimwit isn’t,’ Fuzz pointed out. ‘He’s a pliceman. I mean a policeman.’

  ‘Only because he’s no good at making toys,’ said Legsie sadly. ‘The other elves made up the job of policeman to keep him busy. Uncle Dimwit can’t even spell “policeman”. But it doesn’t matter. No one ever does anything wrong up here, so there’s no real need to have a policeman.’

  She hesitated. ‘They think I’m dumb too, sometimes, because I’m not good at making toys. But I’m not dumb! My hands are just too big for elf tools, so I’m clumsy. And I just don’t like toy-making!’

  ‘I think you’re the cleverest person I’ve met,’ said Fuzz earnestly.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Legsie. She sighed. ‘I’m fine at maths and problem solving. But you should see me try to make a doll that wets itself. My last homework doll had water coming out of her nose instead of in her nappy. The other elves called it Snotty Snuggly. I’m just not cut out to be a toy-maker!’

  ‘What would you like to be?’ asked Fuzz curiously.

  ‘I don’t know. I like to manage things,’ continued Legsie, as she climbed up into the sleigh. ‘I love accounts and things like that. But elves don’t ever charge for their toys. We give them away. So there aren’t even any figures to add up. Elves only get to be toy-makers.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a polar bear,’ admitted Fuzz, hopping up beside her.

  Legsie stared at him. ‘But you aren’t a polar bear!’

  ‘Not a real one. A pretend one in our family zoo. The rest of the family loves being pretend animals. But not me. See?’ He rummaged in his pocket and came up with a photo of his family.

  ‘That’s your family?’ demanded Legsie.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fuzz.

  ‘The rhinoceros?’

  ‘She’s my Mum.

  It’s okay, she’s only pretending to stab that guy with her horn…I think,’ he added.

  ‘And the tiger?’

  ‘He’s my Dad. The blood on his whiskers is just from the rare steak he had for lunch. And the giraffe with the laptop is my sister and the monkeys hanging upside down in that tree are my twin brothers.’

  Legsie looked at the photo again. Then she looked back at Fuzz. Then she looked at the photo a third time. ‘You know,’ she said consideringly, ‘maybe you are a hero. Just not the sort I thought you were…Come on,’ she added as she opened the door. ‘We’d better find your Pa!’

  The two reindeer looked up as they approached. Someone—probably Legsie, Fuzz realised—had left them a bale of grey–green stuff, along with a pile of elf-sized sandwiches.

  ‘That’s moss,’ explained Legsie. ‘Reindeer love moss. And magic reindeer like vegemite sandwiches, so they have those too.’

  They looked like normal-enough reindeer, thought Fuzz. Apart from their tinsel reins, at any rate, and the green and red bows on their tails, and the sign on the back of their sleigh: ‘My other sleigh is a limousine.’

  ‘Come on, you lot.’ Legsie climbed into the sleigh and picked up the tinsel reins. ‘We’re going flying.’

  The reindeer turned around and stared at Fuzz. ‘It’s that polar bear again,’ said one.

  ‘Polar bears are trouble-makers,’ said the other. It shook its head. ‘Are you sure you want to go flying with a polar bear?’ it asked Legsie. ‘It’s just asking for trouble.’

  ‘I’m not a polar bear,’ said Fuzz wearily. He was getting really tired of this. ‘The velcro on my bear suit is frozen. I can’t take the suit off.’

  The first reindeer blinked. ‘I should hope so, too. Can you imagine a naked polar bear?’ it asked its companion. ‘Yuck!’

  ‘A bare bear,’ the other reindeer agreed. ‘Triple yuck!’

  ‘I’m not a polar bear under my suit either!’ protested Fuzz.

  ‘What are you then?’ demanded the first reindeer.

  ‘He’s my hero,’ said Legsie firmly. ‘Except he isn’t really,’ she added.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said the first reindeer. ‘So he’s barely a bear at all.’

  ‘Clear as mud,’ said the second one. ‘He’s a bear but he isn’t, and a hero but he isn’t that either.’

  ‘I’m a boy,’ muttered Fuzz. ‘Underneath the bear suit,’ he added. />
  ‘A naked boy? Legsie, I don’t think you should go riding with a naked boy! Even if he has fur on.’

  ‘No!’ yelled Fuzz. ‘I’m not bare or a bear! I have my clothes on! And a polar bear suit!’

  ‘Just fly us down to the workshops,’ said Legsie. ‘And no arguing!’

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  The reindeer swooped out the door and into the sky, their hooves making tiny trotting movements even though the snowy ground was far below.

  You didn’t get so sleigh-sick when you could see around you, Fuzz decided. And it was even better with a long-legged, green-eyed elf sitting next to you.

  The sleigh whizzed through the cold air.

  ‘How come reindeer can fly and elves can’t?’ asked Fuzz.

  ‘How come you can walk and jelly fish can float?’ asked Legsie.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Fuzz.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Legsie.

  ‘How far is it to the toy workshops?’

  ‘Not far,’ said Legsie. ‘Only about a thousand kilometres. We’re nearly there. Look,’ she pointed. ‘There they are down there.’

  Fuzz stared in the direction she was pointing. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he complained.

  ‘Look again!’

  Fuzz did. And suddenly he could make it all out—a giant mound in the snow, just like a massive bank of ice. But when you looked closely you could see the shape of doors and windows, and faintly hear a tap, tap, tapping and a whistling sound upon the icy breeze.

  ‘We didn’t want to make the building too obvious,’ said Legsie. ‘Otherwise we’d be flooded with tourists. Even someone flying over this in a plane wouldn’t notice anything unless they looked really hard.’

  Something moved around the workshop. Fuzz craned his neck to get a better view. ‘Polar bears!’ he cried.

  ‘Yep,’ said Legsie.

  ‘And they’re…they’re carrying things.’

  ‘Placards,’ sighed Legsie. ‘The polar bears must be demonstrating again.’

  ‘Demonstrating?’

  ‘For the right to make toys. They’re always demonstrating these days. I think Uncle Dimwit thought the bears you were with were going to join the demonstration too. But they don’t do any harm,’ she added. ‘They just get in the way a bit. It’s just that Uncle Dimwit really wants an excuse to arrest someone, just to show he is a real policeman, and I suppose he thought those bears were it.’ She shook her head. ‘If only they’d accept it’s not their job to make toys or pull sleighs!’

  ‘What are polar bears good at?’ asked Fuzz, as the sleigh began to descend.

  ‘Fishing. Eating fish. They’re pretty good at knowing when the ice is fragile too. Bears seem to be able to sense when it’s too thin and is about to break up. It’s happening a lot lately, too.’

  Fuzz remembered the bear he’d met—was it only that morning? Watch out, she’d said, the ice is melting with all this global warming.

  ‘Is the ice really melting with global warming?’ he asked Legsie.

  ‘Uh huh. It’s a statistical probability,’ said Legsie, ‘that all this snow will be melted within twenty-five years.’

  ‘But what will you elves do then?’

  Legsie shrugged. ‘Maybe use magic snow? But it’ll be pretty obvious if this is the only snow-covered area in the whole of the Arctic. No, we’ll be okay. We’ll think of something, even if we have to stop using ice to make our buildings. But it’s going to be bad for the animals.’

  Tinkle…tinkle…jingle…

  The reindeer were landing now. The sleigh came down by the workshop, landing onto the snow with a slight bump. The reindeer trotted for a few metres, then stopped. Legsie jumped out one side of the sleigh and Fuzz jumped out the other. And then he stared.

  The workshop was so much bigger than it looked from above! It was actually a massive building almost the size of a small town, he realised. Here and there, around the front door, marched about a dozen bears, each with a placard high in the air.

  ‘Equal rights for bears!’ he read. ‘Help fight the unbearable!’

  ‘Comrade!’ cried one of the polar bears, catching sight of Fuzz. ‘You’ve come to join us.’

  ‘Er, not exactly,’ said Fuzz. ‘I’m looking for my Pa.’

  ‘Anyone of you bears lost a cub?’ called the first bear.

  ‘Er, I’m not exactly a bear,’ admitted Fuzz.

  The bear stared. ‘You look like a bear. And you say your Pa is a bear?’

  ‘Well, he looks like a bear,’ said Fuzz. ‘But he isn’t really a bear either.’

  The bear blinked at him. ‘So, is your mother a bear?’

  ‘No, she’s a rhinoceros. Most of the time anyway.’

  ‘Right. Any of you bears lost a really dumb grandson?’ called the first bear.

  No one answered, but a few bears snickered. Fuzz flushed under his bear skin. ‘Pa was with a mob of other bears—Ruff, Tuff, Gruff, Muffie, Buffie, Wuffie and Short Stuff.’

  The first bear shook his head. ‘Haven’t seen them for a couple of weeks, I’m afraid. But if they come to join us we’ll say you’ve been looking for them.’ The bear looked at Legsie curiously. ‘Where shall I say you’ll be?’

  ‘I’m staying with Legsie,’ explained Fuzz. ‘And her Uncle Dimwit.’

  ‘With the elves?’ The bears all stared at him.

  ‘You poor cub,’ said one of the bears comfortingly. ‘How do you bear it? You must be hungry with nothing but elf food to eat. Give him a nice big fish, someone.’

  ‘No, thank you. I’m fine,’ began Fuzz, then stopped as a bear thrust a giant flapping fish into his furry arms. ‘Er, thank you,’ he added helplessly.

  ‘My pleasure. You have a nice big feed,’ said the bear, as the fish wiggled madly, trying to get back to water. ‘You need feeding up! If you don’t eat enough you’ll fade away till you’re barely there. A big fish a day keeps the doctor away you know.’

  ‘Er, yes, thank you,’ said Fuzz again.

  ‘So, no sign of your Pa?’ asked Legsie.

  Fuzz shook his head.

  ‘Never mind.’ Legsie patted his fur comfortingly. ‘You may as well see the workshops now that we’re here.’

  Fuzz nodded. He was still trying to keep hold of the flapping fish. Maybe there’d be a pond or a hole in the ice he could shove it in inside, before it died.

  ‘See you later, alligator!’ called the bears, still waving their placards, as he and Legsie went through the front doors.

  Fuzz sighed.

  CHAPTER 15

  Danger!

  Two hours later Fuzz had seen more toys than he’d ever thought existed in the world.

  It had been the most fascinating two hours of his life, though he was getting pretty sick of the whistling—especially as every elf seemed to whistle a different tune from all the others.

  There’d been rooms with elves making space toys, elves creating video games, elves dressing dolls in everything from nappies to evening dresses, elves putting the finishing touches on drums, elves painting battery-operated cars and elves carrying baskets of teddy bear whiskers. Everywhere there’d been elves, whistling as they worked and tap, tap, tapping with tools. There were miniature candles for welding bits of plastic, tiny stamps for making tiny print on books, tiny funnels to put the power into batteries…

  ‘It’s fascinating!’ Fuzz said to Legsie, as they waved goodbye to the bears again and settled themselves back in the sleigh. ‘I could have stayed there and watched for days!’

  Legsie sighed. ‘It’s okay, I suppose. But sometimes I think if I have to whistle another happy tune I’ll vomit.’

  Fuzz fastened his seat belt. ‘I thought it was great! I never realised how much work it all was!’

  Legsie fastened her seat belt too, then took up the reins again. ‘How did you think it was all done?’

  ‘I don’t know. In factories, I suppose.’

  ‘Ordinary toys are made in factories,’ Legsie informed him, as the
reindeer began to trot across the snow. ‘But Christmas toys are made by elves. That’s just the way it’s always been.’ She sighed. ‘I suppose I’ll get used to making toys eventually. And wearing red and green all the time. And whistling. And sticking tails on teddy bears.’

  ‘I don’t think teddy bears have tails,’ said Fuzz tactfully.

  ‘You see? I’m bottom of the class in toy-making! But I’m way at the top in maths! Home, boys!’ she added to the reindeer.

  The reindeer broke into a gallop, then heaved the sleigh up into the sky. ‘Now what?’ asked Legsie over the sound of tinkling bells.

  Fuzz shook his head dismally. ‘I don’t know. We can’t very well fly over the whole Arctic looking for Pa. Or can we?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘Looking for a white bear in the snow? We’d never even notice him. It’s a statistical improbability,’ said Legsie.

  ‘But I can’t just go home again! Not without Pa!’

  ‘Maybe he’ll find his own way home,’ said Legsie hopefully. ‘Polar bears are good at directions. They’re snow and ice experts!’

  ‘But Pa’s not a real polar bear! Remember?’ cried Fuzz.

  ‘Oh. Right,’ said Legsie. ‘I’m getting as bad as Uncle Dimwit. You’d better stay at our place then. Your parents will still think you’re safe on the cruise, won’t they?’

  Fuzz nodded miserably.

  ‘So they won’t be worried. And your Pa will be looking for you too. Maybe he’ll find you first! After all, he saw you fly off with Uncle Dimwit. With a bit of luck he’ll turn up on our doorstep by dinner time!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Fuzz hopefully.

  ‘Good,’ said Legsie happily. ‘Now let’s go home and I’ll beat you at Scrabble. I beat Uncle Dimwit every night,’ she added. ‘But it’s not like beating a real opponent.’

  The mountain loomed in front of them again. It was the highest mountain he’d ever seen, thought Fuzz, as well as the whitest. Now he knew it was there he could make out Uncle Dimwit’s place, like a white pimple high up on the slope.

  ‘You can’t often see the mountain as clearly as this,’ said Legsie. ‘It’s mostly blizzarding. In fact, there have been quite a lot of clear days lately,’ she added thoughtfully. ‘The climate really is changing.’