Holly North

by Emma Savant

  No, not horses.

  Santa looked up from where he’d been currying a reindeer in a far stall. He straightened, stretched with his hands on his lower back, and waved us over.

  The reindeer came to the edges of their large stalls and looked at me as I passed with dark eyes. Their eyes seemed intelligent—too intelligent. Then again, I thought, that would make sense if Dancer really was in her hundreds. She was probably smarter than me by now.

  I stopped at one of the stalls and held out a hand. The reindeer—Dasher, according to the plaque on his stall door—nuzzled me and sniffed deeply, as if he were trying to learn about me from my scent.

  “He’s glad to see you,” Santa said, coming up behind me. “Thanks, Noelle. I’ll take it from here.”

  Noelle nodded briskly and turned to leave. She stopped before she walked out the door to feed Vixen a cluster of moss that had been lying on the floor. The reindeer snuffled with pleasure.

  When she was gone, Santa turned to me and wiped his hands off on his jeans. He was in flannel again today, along with blue jeans and brown suspenders. He was as casual and country as Mary was city and sophisticated. I wondered how they’d ever ended up together.

  “Is this my new assignment?” I said.

  In spite of myself, a tiny bubble of hope rose up in my chest. Sewing eyes on teddy bears had been okay and the House of Claus had come with some genuinely pleasant moments, but this? My eyes flickered away from Santa and back toward Dasher. He watched me, his eyes curious and unblinking.

  “I need your help here,” Santa said. He patted Cupid on the nose, and she leaned happily into the touch.

  “Noelle and Mary made it sound like I was the only one who could help here,” I said. “But I don’t know anything about them.”

  “You’ll learn, but that’s not why you’re needed.” He chuckled, resting a hand on his belly. “They needed to see you’re all right.”

  I tilted my head. “What?”

  “They’ve never run over anyone before,” Santa said. “Not as adults, anyway; there’s no accounting for calves. They haven’t been right since you got back and no matter how many times I tell them you’re fine, they won’t settle.”

  He waved a hand toward the reindeer, all of whom were standing with their heads eagerly hanging out of the stalls. Bright, dark eyes fixed on me.

  “See? She’s perfectly all right.”

  He nudged me.

  “Yes,” I said, although it felt odd to talk to them like they were people. “I’m totally fine.”

  I held up my hands, as if that would mean anything to them, and looked up at Santa. He patted my shoulder with a large, heavy hand and laughed.

  I liked his laugh. I couldn’t help it. He seemed more relaxed here than I’d seen him yet, and I could understand why. Something about the dark warmth of this stable made me feel peaceful and settled in a way I hadn’t experienced since I’d first woken up at the North Pole.

  Santa held out the rubber comb he’d been using on one of the reindeer.

  “You can do Cupid,” he said. “He’s a sweetheart.”

  I took a step back. He held the comb out further until I finally took it.

  “I don’t know anything about reindeer,” I said. “Literally nothing. I didn’t even know you were supposed to brush them.”

  He hooked his thumbs through his suspenders. “Well, you aren’t, ordinarily,” he said. “These are no ordinary reindeer.”

  “Is Dancer really a hundred and six?”

  “And seventeen,” he said. He nodded his bearded chin toward her. I looked, but she seemed young to me, and healthy, with a shining coat and gleaming chocolate eyes.

  “Go on,” Santa said.

  I was drawn to the possibility of making friends with one of these animals. I approached Cupid’s stall, my heart pounding. He was beautiful, smaller than a horse but with giant antlers.

  Those antlers gave me pause. While his shoulders didn’t even come up to mine, his antlers were taller than my head and edged with sharp points. They looked like they could take my eye out.

  I lifted the heavy latch on the stall door. Cupid backed up a few paces, as if he could sense how nervous I was and wanted to give me space.

  Then, he took a careful step forward and pressed his nose against my shoulder, and I melted.

  “Hi,” I said softly. I reached out and patted his neck. He chuffed and leaned into the touch.

  “Hold the comb firmly,” Santa instructed from outside the stall. “Be gentle and brush into the direction of his hair. Careful on his rump. He’s ticklish.”

  I started brushing. Santa watched me for a moment, then walked off.

  After that, it was just Cupid and me, and I was surprised at how comfortable it felt to be standing here with him. He was used to being brushed and moved slowly as though not to spook me.

  “Were you worried about me?” I said in a low voice, combing down from the top of his neck. “It’s nice of you guys to care. I didn’t know reindeer could worry about things. But I guess you’re not like most reindeer.”

  He grunted. I kept brushing.

  Time seemed to slip around me as I settled into the gentle, repetitive motions. When Santa came back, he had to say my name a few times before I realized he was standing there.

  “I want to check in,” he said, once he had my attention. He leaned against the stall door and looked at me through the open window. “You doing all right here?”

  I shrugged, and went back to brushing Cupid. It was easier to look at him than at Santa, and the reindeer seemed to love the attention.

  “I’m okay, I guess,” I said to Cupid’s shoulder. “Everyone’s been welcoming.”

  “You still want to get home, though.”

  It wasn’t a question, for him or for me. Although I couldn’t think of a single reason I should want to go home. I had no family worth the name. I was terrible at staying in touch with friends. My job was a dead end, and it seemed likely that even the most tenacious bill collectors couldn’t follow me here.

  Even so, I didn’t fit in. I didn’t have the relentlessly positive attitude the elves all seemed to share; I didn’t particularly enjoy Christmas on one day of the year, let alone all of them; and, not insignificantly, I seemed to be the only human in the entire North Pole.

  I wasn’t part of this world, and I couldn’t think of a single reason anyone here should want me to be.

  “I’m a Humdrum,” I said. It was a word that summed me up too perfectly. I massaged the comb into Cupid’s side and he snorted and leaned into the touch, hard enough that I had to step back to keep my balance.

  “We’re still working hard on the sleigh.” Santa ran his hand along his chin and down his beard, then cleared his throat. “I understand you’ve been asking after Prince Jack.”

  My heart sank. This was why I was here. It had nothing to do with the reindeer or their concern for me.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “Everyone made it pretty clear he’s bad news.”

  “I want to be sure you know that,” Santa said. “I don’t want to see you get involved with him.”

  He sounded genuinely worried, but I couldn’t help wondering if he wouldn’t be happier if Frost could just take me home and get me out of everyone’s hair.

  “Not much risk of that,” I said.

  Santa seemed to be debating on whether to say anything more, then nodded and just said, “Good.”

  He moved to walk away.

  “Santa?”

  He stopped.

  “Are you sending me back to House of Claus after today?”

  His white eyebrows went up, just a little. “Mary said you seemed to be enjoying it there.”

  “I was,” I said. I glanced down at Cupid, whose eyes were closed in pleasure over the feel of the brush against his thick fur. “It’s just—could I get reassigned here? Permanently, I mean? Or, as permanently as I can, since I’m going home soon?”

  Santa seemed surprised, and looked at
Cupid for a moment.

  “I suppose so,” he said. “If you enjoy it.”

  I swallowed hard and nodded as my heart skipped a beat. I didn’t love Christmas, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about the North Pole.

  But I knew, already, that I loved these reindeer.

  “Well, sure,” Santa said, tapping his fingers against his belly. “Consider yourself reassigned. Felix runs the stables, so he’ll get you trained up.”

  “That would be great,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Santa watched us for a moment, then said, “Huh” in a low, bemused voice and left the stables.

  I turned back to Cupid and buried my fingers in his thick fur.

  Chapter 14

  “Seriously?” Nate shouted.

  He sat straight up and set his cocoa mug on the coffee table in front of us. I stared in horror at Joy, who’d come to deliver the news. Around us in the lounge, elves stopped their foosball matches and paused their video games to look over.

  Joy let out a huge sigh, the kind that hysterical people used to calm themselves down, and folded her arms tight across her chest.

  “Whole internal sensor system’s busted,” she said. “Santa’s having to have parts flown in and he’s going to have to go into Frost’s territory to get them, and he’s not even sure the goblins will be able to enchant the pieces in time.”

  I didn’t know anything about the mechanics of cars or airplanes, but the internal workings of Santa’s sleigh seemed more complicated than any vehicle that existed in the Humdrum world, and they were about to strand me in the North Pole for who knew how long.

  My conundrum wasn’t why the elves were panicking all around me, though. Joy had uttered what seemed like showstopping words around here: “We might have to cancel Christmas.” It sounded like the plot of a trite holiday movie back in my world, but here, the people I’d gotten to know over the past weeks looked like they were about to punch walls or burst into tears.

  “We’ve worked for ages on the robot monkeys!” someone wailed from across the room. Her friend patted her on the back but looked like she was going to be sick.

  Even Felix, standing behind Joy, looked like he’d had better days.

  “We’re not giving up hope yet,” he announced to the room. “The goblins are expediting the order and the sleigh crew is working around the clock trying to find another solution. We need to keep working hard and giving Santa our best.”

  One elf responded with halfhearted “Yeah,” but it wasn’t enough to lift the weight from the room. Off in one corner, Lucy sat in an armchair with her legs drawn up under her. She held her head in her hands and seemed to be taking deep breaths. I could only imagine how she felt after putting together thousands upon thousands of outfits for Christmas morning.

  Felix stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. I’d spent the day with him, learning how to take care of the reindeer, and he’d been upbeat and chatty. Now, I got the impression he was just trying to hold it together for everyone else.

  I stood up. “I’ll grab you guys some cocoa.”

  Joy nodded gratefully and sank into the other sofa in front of the fireplace. She put her feet up on its coffee table, leaned back into the thick upholstery, and closed her eyes as if she could shut out the whole of reality.

  Felix followed me to the cocoa table. It took up almost a whole wall and held three large silver dispensers—Milk, Dark, White—and silver-lidded glass jars full of marshmallows, crushed candy canes, and coconut. A dizzying array of syrup dispensers and spice shakers sat in front of the jars.

  “Joy likes whipped cream and cinnamon,” Felix said, while he put together his own sugar coma of marshmallow and chocolate syrup.

  I brought her drink back to the table, and she accepted it with a grateful sigh.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” she said.

  Nate tapped his knuckles on the table in an antsy rhythm. “It’s not actually going to come to all that,” he said, sounding too confident for his confidence to be real. “Santa will sort it out. He always does.”

  “Not when Jack’s in the picture.” Joy glanced at me. “The power went down again yesterday.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Nate said.

  No one answered. Even I knew it wasn’t a good sign.

  “Why does Santa have to go to Jack’s territory?” I said.

  “Santa’s the only one who can just walk through the dome,” Joy said. “Everyone else needs the sleigh, and… well.”

  “The goblins don’t come this far north,” Felix said. “They’re going to create and enchant the parts we need, and then some faeries are going to actually deliver the stuff up here. It’s anyone’s guess what Frost will do to stop them getting here in one piece.”

  He sipped his cocoa. The whipped cream left a white mustache on his upper lip.

  “Frost wouldn’t dare attack them,” Nate said. “The Faerie Queen wouldn’t take kindly to it.”

  “Like Frost cares what the Faerie Queen thinks,” Joy muttered. “He’s on too much of a power trip to listen to anything she has to say. I just hope they get through all right, and that Santa is able to meet them and get back safely.”

  She clutched her mug. Everyone else went silent at her words.

  Santa was everything around here, and the thought of him being in danger seemed to quiet even Nate.

  I curled my legs up under me. “When’s the stuff supposed to get here?”

  “Week before Christmas,” Felix said. “

  Joy closed her eyes and let out a deep breath.

  “That’s cutting it too close,” Nate said, shaking his head.

  A meow sounded at our feet. I looked down to see Joy’s cat, Butterscotch, rubbing his head on the sofa. He and a few other pets had free reign of this wing of the live-in elves’ quarters. No one seemed to mind the cats and dogs wandering around, or the three rats that ran around the wing like they owned it. Joy patted her lap and Butterscotch jumped up, turned a circle, and then plopped down and started purring.

  I reached over and scratched between his ears. He closed his eyes and blissed out.

  “What if something happens and they can’t get the parts?” I said. “You really just cancel Christmas?”

  “Not much else we can do,” Nate said.

  I opened my mouth to say And what about me?, then closed it again. The stricken looks on the faces around me made it clear: This wasn’t about me. This was a crisis that affected all of us, and I wasn’t the most upset person in this room right now—not by a long shot.

  Joy was red-faced and looked like she was about to burst into tears. I handed her a napkin, just in case.

  It didn’t look good. I could tell from Felix’s forced smile and the way Nate’s knee kept jumping that they were doing their best to keep a lid on their emotions—and if this was what it looked like to keep a lid on things, I could only imagine what they were going through on the inside.

  I was going to be stuck here, I realized. Maybe just for a few more weeks until the sleigh was really and truly fixed, but maybe for longer. If the sleigh wasn’t ready by Christmas, I wouldn’t be important enough to keep the mechanics working on it night and day. Who knew how long I’d be stuck here?

  “I think I might take you up on that houseplant offer,” I said to Joy.

  She’d offered me cuttings of one of her philodendrons. Since I’d killed every plant I’d ever tried to grow, including a cactus an old roommate had assured me was immortal, I’d declined. Now it sounded like I was going to be here for a while, though, and I needed something to keep my rooms from feeling like a themed hotel suite.

  She sniffed and nodded.

  I looked around the room. Every elf in the place seemed like they were on the verge of some kind of nervous collapse. The North Pole was under more pressure than I’d realized, and somehow, through a freak accident, I’d ended up in the middle of it.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I s
aid, with all the conviction of someone who had no idea what she was talking about. “We have nothing to worry about.”

  Chapter 15

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and snapped a picture of Vixen’s adorable face. She was the smallest of the reindeer, and had beautiful eyes that highlighted her curiosity about everything.

  My phone didn’t get any kind of signal here, of course, so it had turned into a glorified camera. The elves insisted there was internet here, but when I’d tried to get onto it, I’d learned it was actually a “sister technology” called the JinxNet that was totally incompatible with my device.

  There wasn’t much do to on the internet, anyway. What was I going to do, upload selfies of me and Santa frolicking around the Workshop? I’d be carted off for intensive therapy when I got home.

  If I got home.

  I shoved my phone back in my pocket and gathered an armful of alfalfa from the collapsed hay bales in a large corner trough. I dumped the armload into Donner’s stall. The hay landed on the stall floor, sending up a furry of pale green dust.

  Donner snorted, pawed the hay, and started gobbling it up without looking at me.

  “You’re a pig,” I told him, which didn’t disturb him in the slightest.

  I patted Rudolph’s nose as I passed his stall. His nose was red, but it wasn’t bulbous like a clown’s, the way I’d always seen it in pictures. I’d been surprised to discover that he looked pretty ordinary, aside from the way the hair on his snout faded to a warm russet color.

  “It doesn’t glow or anything, either,” Felix had told me a few days ago while we’d been mucking out the stalls. “Dude’s just got a really good sense of direction and doesn’t seem to rely on visual landmarks. He’s gotten the team through more than a few blizzards.”

  The reindeer had just come in from a morning of running around and playing in their large outdoor enclosure, and now they were happy to be stuffing their faces with hay and moss. Prancer had already finished his lunch and was starting to get sleepy-eyed. I massaged him between the antlers.

  “It’s okay, you can sleep.” I kissed his nose, and he chuffed at me in response.