by Emma Savant
She picked up a pair of bright green socks covered in a watermelon print and tossed them down the table to a girl who was working on a red T-shirt ensemble. “I wish we had the manpower for that,” she said. “They’re just profiles. They work okay, though.”
I stared at the piles of clothing on the table. “What if those kids hate what I pick out?”
“Then they’ll be disappointed on Christmas morning,” she said seriously, then cracked up. “Dude, don’t take it too seriously. Not like anyone meant it, anyway. This is supposed to be fun.”
I’d never heard that about a job before. I took a deep breath and started poking through the clothes on the table. Lucy watched me for a few seconds, then went back to work.
After a few minutes, someone across the room shouted, “Let’s get some music up in here!” and the sound of peppy Christmas pop filled the room.
I cringed. Holiday music was the worst.
They all seemed to enjoy it, though, and a few elves started dancing while they dressed their mannequins. Everyone here seemed way too happy. I didn’t know what to make of it.
I pulled together a pile of colorful clothes and started sifting through them, looking for things that might go together. I dressed the nearest mannequin, which was harder than it looked, and stepped back to evaluate. The pink T-shirt and jeans looked fine, but boring. It looked like the brighter version of something I’d wear.
“Maybe add some accessories,” Lucy suggested. “A good scarf or necklace can make or break an outfit. Jewelry’s over there,” she added, jerking her thumb toward a series of plastic drawers against the wall.
I sifted through the jewelry and came back with a hot pink bracelet, then poked through the hair accessories and found a stretchy pink and white headband. Lucy tilted her head, then tossed me a pair of leggings.
“Try these.”
I replaced the jeans with the bright pink and purple leggings, and Lucy gave me a thumbs-up.
“You’re rocking it,” she said. “Pin the profile to her shirt and send her through.”
This was fun, I realized after a while. I’d never much enjoyed shopping for myself. Mom had never given me much choice about my wardrobe, and I hadn’t had a lot of spending money after I’d moved out on my own. But these imaginary kids had their pick of everything in the House of Claus, and it was more fun to dress them than myself.
Eventually, even the nasally sound of someone’s “Santa Baby” cover didn’t grate on me so much. Noelle and Mary had been right: This was a lot more interesting than sewing button eyes.
Something didn’t sit right with me, though. Santa’s resources were clearly extensive and, looking at the mountains of clothing, I couldn’t help but feel slightly unsettled.
I waved Lucy over when she was between outfits.
“Why aren’t we putting together outfits for everyone?” I said. “These are all very… Western.”
This fabric must have been expensive. Santa could have spent it on solving world hunger, or advancing developing countries, or food for the hungry, or a thousand things less frivolous than cute clothes.
Lucy smiled and started digging through the pile next to me and pulling out anything purple or gold.
“We have to keep ourselves secret,” she said. “Why else do you think Santa co-opted an existing holiday for all this?” I frowned at her, and she added, “That idea of Santa travelling around the world in one night isn’t really true. He only visits families that celebrate Christmas.”
“Rich families,” I said.
Her smile left her eyes. “Yeah,” she said, more quietly. “We have to make the parents believe they did everything. Once in a while we put together a Christmas miracle, if we think we can get away with it, but most of the time we have to be sure to match gifts to families’ socioeconomic levels, religious beliefs, cultures—there’s a whole department that just matches gifts to families and makes sure we’re not infringing on anyone. It’s complicated.”
“Apparently.”
“We have to keep security tight around here,” she said, almost apologetically. “Secrecy is a big part of that.”
I stared at the mountains of fabric around us.
“Then what’s the point? If you do all of this and then you spend all that effort making the parents think they bought the presents, why do you even do it?”
“Santa does it because he wants to,” she said simply.
“But why?”
“Why not?”
She didn’t seem to even understand my question. We looked at each other, equally confused, and then she shrugged and offered, “He donates to a ton of soup kitchens and humanitarian aid organizations, if that’s what you’re asking. The rest of this just gives him something to do.”
She laughed at my bewildered expression and went back to work.
We took a break for lunch. Lucy dragged me to the cafeteria and made me sit with her and some of her friends. They chatted about some new Glim movie that was coming out and on how Glim cinema was really “hitting its stride.” Finally, I nudged Lucy.
“What’s Glim?” I said.
Her eyes widened. “It’s us,” she said. “Oh, gosh, I hadn’t even realized. Of course you wouldn’t know. Glimmers are what we call magical people. Elves, faeries, nymphs, even vampires—all the people you probably only know from stories.”
“There’s more?” I said.
I frowned at her, but what did I have to be so bewildered about, really? If Santa Claus existed, and I was sitting in the snowflake-shaped Workshop eating lunch with elves, of course anything else was possible.
It still made my head spin.
“Way more,” Lucy said. She bit her lip. “I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to tell you. Humdrums aren’t really supposed to know about us, but, I mean, it’s not like we could have kept it hidden under the circumstances.”
“And I’m a Humdrum,” I said. “People keep calling me that.”
She looked a little awkward. “I know it’s not super complimentary.”
I stabbed a salad leaf with my fork. “No,” I said. “It fits. Describes my life perfectly.”
She nudged my arm with her shoulder. “Not anymore,” she said, as if this whole kidnapped-to-the-North-Pole adventure was something to be excited about.
Maybe it was. I’d had a better morning dressing mannequins than I’d had in a long time.
After lunch, Lucy pulled me into her office, a tiny, windowless room practically wallpapered in fashion photos and motivational posters. She handed me a stack of manila folders and a large brown paper bag filled with colorful fabric.
“Would you run these to Mary’s office?” she said. “Stuff for her to sign, and then I need her to approve the scarf designs. You can just leave everything on her desk. She probably won’t get to them for a while. Thank you. You’re the best!”
I let her load me up and then found my way back to Mary’s office. One nice thing about the Workshop’s design was that it was hard to get lost within a wing. All I had to do was keep walking until I found the right office.
Mary’s door was slightly ajar. I didn’t have a free hand to knock, so I nudged it open with my hip. Mary wasn’t there, but I could hear her voice coming through a side door.
I realized after an instant that I’d walked in on something I probably shouldn’t be hearing.
“This is serious,” Mary said in a low, intense voice. “I’m trying to keep up appearances, but it’s not like they don’t know what’s going on.”
“Most of them don’t,” said Santa. I recognized his voice immediately, and it made me tense up. Santa, I was pretty sure, didn’t like me much.
I set the folders on the desk as silently as possible, then tried to find a space for the bag.
“Frost is not going to let up until he’s gotten what he came for,” Mary hissed. “You can stick your head in the sand all you want, but he’s made it into the city twice.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I’m full
y aware of the situation, but I don’t know what you expect me to do about it. Security’s on alert and we’ve reinforced the dome as much as possible.”
“That’s not going to be enough.”
“You don’t know that.”
I backed up and tried to slip out of the door as quietly as possible. Just as I left, I heard Mary slam something down on a table.
“I know everything,” she snapped. “I’m your wife, remember?”
Chapter 10
I picked at my mashed potatoes. Joy and Nate had invited themselves to my table when they’d seen me eating dinner alone, and now they were cheerfully bickering about who’d won some annual snow sculpture competition.
“No way,” Nate said. “Caulfield dominated.”
Joy snorted. “Yeah, in the pretension category.”
“Shakespeare is the father of English literature, which includes those romance novels you’re always gobbling up,” Nate said.
“Yeah, but that codpiece, though.” Joy held up a hand, indicating the size of the thing, and dissolved into giggles.
“You seriously think a lifelike sculpture of the Bard is less pretentious than the Venus of Willendorf?”
“Hey,” Joy said. “That was cool.”
“Who’s Frost?” I said.
They both stopped talking. Nate stared at me, and Joy glanced sharply behind her, as though someone might be eavesdropping.
“Jack Frost?” Joy said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear her.
I lowered my voice, too, since apparently that was the thing to do. “I guess?” I said. “I overheard Mary and Santa talking about someone called Frost.”
Nate’s eyebrows drew together. “He’s the prince of this region.”
“I guess you wouldn’t know, not being from around here,” Joy said.
“And a Humdrum,” Nate added.
Joy looked over her shoulder, but no one was paying attention to us.
“The Glimmering world is full of royalty,” she said, still in an undertone. “Most of the titles are just that, titles, but some members of certain royal lines still have power. The Faerie Queen is the biggest one, obviously, but then there are the sea kings and the rulers of the Irish faerie courts. The North Pole has Jack Frost.”
I should have guessed. If Santa existed, why not Jack Frost and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy and the monster under my bed?
“Santa seemed pretty nervous about him.”
“We’re all nervous about him,” Joy said.
Nate picked up his knife and started sawing into a slice of ham.
“Speak for yourself,” he said. “Not everyone thinks he’s an actual threat. Santa’s kept him under control for a long time. He’s not going to suddenly get more powerful just because he wants to let Humdrums in to drill oil.”
“That’s what Santa’s worried about, though,” Joy said. She glanced around again and leaned across the table towards me. “Frost has always been, um—”
“A handful,” Nate said.
“Yeah. But in the last couple of years, I guess he’s realized that he can make a lot of money by letting Humdrums drill for oil here at the North Pole. We’re pretty oil-rich, or we would be, and Frost would get the biggest cut. Santa doesn’t want anything to do with it, though.”
“Humdrums can’t know about the Workshop or the city,” Nate said. “They find out about that and it’s just one more step until they know all about the Glimmering world, and that can’t happen.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Would you want the world’s governments experimenting on you?” he said. “We have magic. Think about what would happen if your people found out about it.”
I didn’t have to think hard. The kind of magic I’d already seen at the North Pole could only be the tip of a large iceberg, and one look at the news was enough to tell me there was nothing humans wouldn’t try to weaponize or exploit.
“Santa and Frost have been in a power struggle over it for a while,” Joy said. An elf walked behind her, and she lowered her voice even more. “In the last year, Frost’s stopped asking nicely. He’s been trying to shut down the magic barrier that encloses the city so the Humdrums can get in.”
“His palace is outside the dome,” Nate cut in. “He’s not allowed in Santa’s territory, but that’s where the oil is.”
“Sounds like a mess,” I said. I ran my finger through the condensation on my water glass, leaving a clear streak behind amid the sweat. “Wait—is that what’s been causing the lights to flicker?”
Joy nodded, but Nate scoffed.
“That’s just rumor,” he said. “We’ve had electrical failures before.”
“Not this often,” Joy said.
“So we need to update the power grid,” he said. “I think everyone’s jumping at shadows.”
“Listen, you probably shouldn’t talk about this to anyone else,” Joy said to me. “Santa doesn’t like people asking about Frost.”
I nodded, but I didn’t have to talk in order to keep thinking.
I stood at my bedroom window that evening with the lights off and a cup of steaming cocoa in my hand. It was dark enough in my room that I could see outside. The icy sea churned into the distance, but above it, the sky was alive with light. The Aurora Borealis cascaded in giant ripples across the heavens in shades of green and blue.
I’d seen pictures of the Northern Lights before, of course, but nothing could have prepared me for the way the sight took my breath away. The lights shifted across the sky like miles of shimmering fabric, and the colors were so bright I almost couldn’t believe they were real.
This Jack Frost had Santa scared, or at least nervous. I didn’t know what I thought about that, because I still wasn’t sure what I thought about Santa. He wasn’t quite the jolly old elf I’d expected, and he certainly wasn’t crazy about me. That might not be enough to make him a bad person, but it was enough to make me wonder what Frost was actually like.
More than that, it was enough to make me wonder what Frost was capable of. If he was trying to shut down the dome around the North Pole, did that mean he could get in?
I stood and watched the lights until my cocoa grew cold.
If Frost could get in—didn’t that mean he could also get out?
Chapter 11
I paused in the doorway. When Lucy had told me to run a few bolts of red satin to Womenswear, I had expected to run across blouses and maybe some satin pajamas. I had not expected to find Mrs. Claus pinning white lace onto an elf’s red bra while the elf stood in her underwear and said things like, “Yeah, it itches if you put it there” and “That’s what I was saying about the cups gaping.”
After a few minutes, the elf noticed me and cleared her throat. Mary looked up.
“Is that the charmeuse?” she asked.
I held up the bolts, but they weren’t labeled. “I think so?” I said. “Lucy said to bring you the satin.”
“That’s it,” she said. She nodded to a table. “Set it there.”
I did, while she stood back and stared intently at the bra. I cleared my throat. Mary looked at me.
“You make lingerie?” I said. “I thought this was all for, like… kids.”
“This is the Santa Baby line,” she said. “Not for kids. We sell it to department stores. Helps us cover costs whenever we need to buy things from the Humdrum world.”
“Lingerie, though?” I said.
For some reason, the idea wouldn’t settle in my mind. This was the North Pole. We were at Santa Claus’s Workshop. Sexy bras didn’t enter into it.
“Oh, come on, where do you think all those faux fur-trimmed teddies came from around the holidays?” Mary said. “I made one for myself a few years back with the cutest little G-string and Santa went just crazy over it, so we decided to go commercial.”
She winked.
I cringed.
The last thing on the entire planet I wanted to hear about was Santa and Mrs. Claus’s love life.
“I
’d better get back to Children’s,” I said. Mary nodded seriously, but her eyes twinkled, and the half-naked elf behind her barely suppressed a smile.
I darted back into the hall as quickly as possible and almost ran into Noelle, who was holding a clipboard. She held a hand up between us to stop me.
“Sorry,” I said, just as she said, “I’ve been looking for you.”
I wasn’t in the mood for another transfer, and definitely not one to Womenswear, if that’s what she was about to say. She pursed her lips and waved me to follow her.
We went into Mary’s office, and Noelle closed the door.
“I understand you’ve been asking about Jack Frost,” she said. She held her clipboard up against her chest like it was a shield. She stared at me, waiting for an answer.
“Is that a crime?” I said. I folded my arms.
“It’s not a crime,” she said, frowning. “Just because something’s legal doesn’t mean it’s wise.”
Not only had I recently been run over by a sleigh, but I’d just learned that Santa Claus had a preference for sexy teddies. That was enough stress for one month. I was not in the mood for a lecture on top of it.
“Did Joy tell you?” I said.
“Someone overheard you,” she said.
“I didn’t know who he was. I asked. Now I know.” I held up my hands. “I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to talk about him.”
Noelle gave me an intense look, like she was trying to figure out if I was a fundamentally truthful person. I had no idea how I was supposed to convey that with my mere presence, so I kept my arms folded and let her stare.
I was liking her less and less by the second.
“You should stay out of it,” she said.
“I’m not in it,” I said. Everything about her got my hackles up, from her pursed lips to her Peter Pan collar to the judgmental look I got every time I encountered her. “I didn’t realize asking a basic question meant I was getting involved in something. That’s not how things work where I’m from.”
“This isn’t where you’re from,” Noelle said. “The consequences of any breach in the North Pole’s security would be severe.”