by Matt Haig
But even with the tiny comforts there wasn’t a single second of the day that Amelia hadn’t dreamt of one thing.
Escape.
She dreamt of leaving this horrid place and seeing Captain Soot again and running away to the countryside. Or anywhere that wasn’t Creeper’s Workhouse. And every single minute of every single day, she waited, like a cat watching a bird, for the right moment to strike.
Four Cheers for Father Christmas!
ather Christmas stood beside the infinity sack in front of all the elves in the Toy Workshop for the last time that year. Many of the elves were standing on tables. Some were holding the last toys they’d made that year, ready to drop them in the sack.
‘Well, elves, you have done yourselves proud,’ Father Christmas said, keeping an eye on the clock at the back of the room.
Everyone clapped and cheered. Bobbette the bubblemaker blew bubbles. Windy the whistlemaker blew a whistle. Dimple the prank toymaker sat down on a whoopee cushion. Bella the joke writer laughed. And Clementine the orange-haired satsuma grower fainted with excitement.
‘Ho ho ho,’ laughed Father Christmas.
‘You did us proud more like,’ said Humdrum, pushing his glasses further up his nose. Humdrum didn’t like speaking in public, as a rule, but he’d got a bit carried away in the moment. His face was now as red as Father Christmas’s outfit. He desperately tried to think of something funny or witty or heartfelt to say but he wasn’t good with words, especially the words you say in front of people so instead he said, ‘Three cheers for F-F-F-Father Christmas!’
The elves did four cheers because in elf arithmetic you always have to add one for good luck.
‘Everything is going according to plan,’ said Father Christmas. ‘And not so much as a rumble from below the ground.’
As Father Christmas spoke a bell dinged and donged.
Father Topo, who had been standing near Father Christmas’s side, went to open the door. It was the elf children from the kindergarten along with their teacher, Mother Loka.
Father Christmas laughed, because the sight of children always cheered him up. ‘Ho ho ho. Hello, children! Do come in! There are lots of leftover toys for you to choose from!’
The children in their multi-coloured tunics and with beaming faces filed into the room, their little clogs clip-clopping on the floor. But then Humdrum began to panic. Father Topo saw his face, and realised what the problem was. Father Topo whispered into Mother Loka’s ear, ‘Where’s Little Mim?’
Mother Loka smiled. ‘He’s right here.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Father Topo, seeing one hundred and seventy-two elf children, none of whom were Little Mim.
Then Mother Loka gasped, realising that Little Mim really wasn’t there.
Humdrum began to panic.
Father Topo looked at his watch. It was five minutes after Quite Late in the Day. Humdrum was already out of the door, running home to see if his son was there.
Father Christmas was looking at all this commotion but hadn’t overheard.
‘Anything wrong, Father Topo?’
‘No, no,’ said Father Topo. ‘No, no, no. No problem. Though it is Quite Late in the Day, so it is about time you and your infinity sack made their way to Reindeer Field.’ Father Topo forced a smile, trying to keep worry out of the air. ‘Come on, the whole world is waiting.’
The New Sleigh
here was a giant parcel sitting in the middle of the Reindeer Field. Kip and Bibi were standing next to it. Purple-haired Bibi was Head of Wrapping Presents in the workshop, and her last job of the year had been to wrap this present for Father Christmas. Bibi, with her bow in her hair and her belt made of ribbon, looked like a parcel herself, and smiled excitedly at Father Christmas.
It was very nice wrapping paper, thought Father Christmas, as he walked across the snowy field. Sparkly silver stars against a shiny background with a bright red bow. Even the reindeer seemed impressed.
A huge crowd of excited elves had gathered. Everyone was wearing their favourite tunics. Most of these tunics were bright green or red. Father Vodol’s was black. Kip’s was a grey tunic with words knitted on the front. They said: ‘NEVER EAT YELLOW SNOW.’
‘Well, I wasn’t expecting a present.’ Father Christmas laughed, and unwrapped it in wild bursts, the paper flying as the crowd cheered.
And there it was.
A new sleigh.
‘It looks amazing,’ said Father Christmas, because it did. Bright red, with sleek silver runners, and a polished wooden interior. It was twice the size of the last sleigh and there were more gadgets and dials on the dashboard too.
Father Christmas climbed in and sat on the luxury leather seat.
‘Very nice indeed.’
Kip ran through everything in his low sleepy voice. ‘There’s the compass, that’s your altitude gauge to show you how high you are, that at the back is the propulsion unit . . .’
Father Christmas pointed at a strange curved object with a wire connecting it to the rest of the sleigh.
‘That is the telephone,’ said Kip. ‘It lets you talk to the Toy Workshop HQ while you are in the air. I just invented it.’
‘Telephone?’
‘Yes. Well, I first called it a Tell-Elf-Home, but everyone kept on saying it wrong so now it is a telephone. What do you think?’
(Now, reader, I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, but hey, wait a minute, we’re in 1841 and the telephone wasn’t invented until 1849 by a young Italian man called Antonio Meucci, and a similar concept was later patented by Alexander Bell. Yes? Well, what you never actually hear is that both Antonio and Alexander were in fact given their telephones for Christmas, by Father Christmas the year after this one, and that the very first ever telephone was invented by this slightly forlorn elf in the grey tunic.)
‘A telephone!’ said Father Christmas. ‘What a marvellous thing.’
But then he saw the most amazing thing of all, right on the dashboard. It was a glass hemisphere sticking out of the woodwork. And inside were little clouds of green and violet and pink light swirling slowly around and through each other, like beautiful dancing ghosts.
‘Wow,’ said Father Christmas. ‘An in-built Barometer of Hope. Well done, Kip. Well done indeed. Thank you so much for my Christmas present!’
He thought this new sleigh would make a great Christmas story for the Daily Snow so he looked around for Noosh, who was usually in Reindeer Field at this time of day. He scanned the crowd near the reindeer, but no, she wasn’t there. She was nowhere among those smiling excited faces.
Even Father Vodol was smiling.
‘Father Vodol, have you seen Noosh?’
Father Vodol scratched his beard nervously. ‘I gave her the day off.’
‘Oh,’ said Father Christmas, and he had a feeling that something was wrong, or at least not quite right.
But then he looked at the shining sleigh and the eight reindeer and the happy crowd and he was excited again and he took a big breath and said to the crowd: ‘THIS IS GOING TO BE THE MOST AMAZING CHRISTMAS EVER!’
And the crowd seemed to agree.
The Bite
s Amelia heaved the mangle crank that afternoon in the dark laundry room, she remembered last Christmas. When her mother had died. When Father Christmas failed to arrive. And when all the hope had fallen out of the world. She thought about Captain Soot’s desperate farewell miaow. All these thoughts went round and round like the handle she was turning.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Mrs Sharpe scraping her chair as she got up and the slam of the door as she left the room.
The other girls were busy filling up the huge wash tub with hot water. This was Amelia’s chance. She sneaked out, hidden by the foggy steam of the laundry room. In the corridor she could hear voices and footsteps. She ran into the first empty room she could find and shut the door quietly behind her. She looked at the windows. They were high up, so she had to climb on a chair to unlock the rusty wind
ow latch and then use all her strength to try and open the heavy window. She wasn’t thinking straight. She knew this wasn’t much of a plan. The workhouse’s main fireplace would have been a better idea, but there was no way of getting there without being noticed. Her arms were so sore and tired and empty from turning the mangle crank that even though she pushed and pushed, the window would not budge.
Oh, and then: ‘WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?’
Mr Creeper. He slammed his cane down and marched over to her.
‘Get off me, you horrible raggabrash!’ Amelia said. Mr Creeper’s long skinny old hand was right there in front of her face as he reached up to lock the window. So she did something.
Something risky.
Something silly.
Something, she was sure, that Captain Soot would approve of.
She bit him.
That’s right. Amelia bit into Mr Creeper’s hand, pressing her teeth into his skin as hard as she could. And even though her arms didn’t have any strength in them, it turned out that her teeth did.
‘AAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!’ wailed Mr Creeper. ‘YOU ANIMAL! SOMEBODY GET THIS MONSTROUS CHILD OFF ME!!!’
And within a moment or two Mrs Sharpe was pulling her off Mr Creeper, who was now staring at the bright red bite-mark imprinted on his skin.
‘Well,’ he said to Amelia, as she tried to fight free from Mrs Sharpe. ‘Twelve months and she’s still a wild animal! Still the same girl who kicked me last year! Just like your foolish father.’
‘What do you know about my father?’
‘I knew him as a boy. We grew up on the same street. He was a violent rat . . . He thought doing this,’ he pointed at his broken crooked nose, ‘was the same as standing on a cat’s tail.’
Amelia smiled. She knew her dad was a hero.
‘You’re as stupid as him. Take her downstairs! To the basement! And lock her in the refractory cell! And KEEP HER THERE!’
And so Amelia was dragged downstairs by Mrs Sharpe and locked in a bare room with nothing but a hard bed and a chamber pot and a tiny barred window. She sat on the cold stone floor and let the tears fall like rain out of her eyes and felt every last drop of hope leave her body.
The child who once had the most hope had now almost completely run out. And so, at exactly the same time, in the sky just south of Elfhelm, the Northern Lights lost some of their glow.
A Crash Landing
ather Christmas rose up on his sleigh, through the cold night air, and already – compared to last year – this was a miracle. He supposed that everything was going to plan because there had been no troll attack. He smiled, looking at the world below, and the reindeer bottoms in front. But he had to admit, the sleigh’s Barometer of Hope was not glowing as much as he would have liked.
‘Can you see the lights yet, Blitzen? Can you see them, Donner? Any of you?’
Blitzen nodded, without looking around.
Yes, there they were. Rippling curtains of pale green and violet spread across the air.
‘Right into them, deers!’ Father Christmas told the reindeer. ‘Right into the light . . . This is SO EXCITING!’
And his whole body tingled with joyous magic as he travelled through the lights, seeing nothing but green and violet luminescence (which was his third favourite word, after magic and chocolate). He felt so warm and happy and full of confidence that he could do anything, even stop time itself.
He knew, though, that if he was to do that he had to be quick. With the coloured lights all around he looked at the clock in the sleigh. It was only a few seconds after the Beginning of Night. He pressed the little button right in the centre of the clock. The button that said ‘STOP’.
And Father Christmas watched the second hand stop, and go no further.
‘And you stay there,’ he told that second hand.
Snow hung motionless in the air. They passed a large white-and-black bird that was totally still, high in the sky, with wings outstretched. An arctic goose, frozen in time. When Father Christmas had delivered all his presents this goose, along with the rest of the world, would carry on moving, as if nothing had happened. Birds would carry on flying. Snowflakes would carry on falling. Children would wake up and see their presents in their stockings.
He then spoke the first child’s name. The first child he ever visited.
‘Amelia Wishart,’ he said, remembering two Christmases ago. The girl who had sent him a letter. The letter that had flown through the air last December and landed on the south side of Big Mountain. According to Pip, the letter catcher who had been on duty, no letter had flown further up the mountain. The letter he’d had in his pocket ever since.
And the compass shifted, south-eastwards, which told him which direction to steer. So he tugged on the reins with his right hand, as the propulsion unit display glowed an intense red. The speedometer pointed to ‘VERY FAST INDEED’, the altitude gauge read, ‘IN THE CLOUDS’ and Father Christmas and the reindeer sped through the nineteen hundred and eighty-two miles to the city of London.
‘Ho ho ho!’ said Father Christmas, laughing to himself with sheer joy as he flew over Finland and Sweden and Denmark. Passing over houses he would visit later in the night or, rather, the same time in the night. He was determined to begin with London, with Amelia, as that would be lucky. And she had written him that letter – quite an important letter. And he needed to try and give this girl the happiest Christmas ever. As he flew he decided to talk to the reindeer. He often spoke to the reindeer. He was, after all, the author of one of Elfhelm’s bestselling books The Reindeer Whisperer.
‘Shall I tell you some jokes?’
The reindeer galloped faster, as if the jokes were something they could run away from. Father Christmas didn’t get the hint.
‘All right . . . What is the best present in the world? Any ideas? No? A broken drum. Because you just can’t beat it! Do you get it? A broken drum! Ho ho ho.’
He looked down. They were over water now.
‘Hello, sea!’ he shouted down. Then he chuckled, thinking of another joke. ‘The sea didn’t answer. It just waved . . . Do you get it? It just waved. Because of waves. It’s so funny, isn’t it?’
The reindeer said nothing.
‘Do you want another one? I’ve got more. Have you heard the one about the pixie whose head got stuck up an elf’s . . .’
Father Christmas stopped. Everything was still as it should be. The sleigh was still flying. The reindeer were still galloping through the air. He still felt happy.
But.
But, but, but, but.
Something was happening to the Barometer of Hope. He tapped it. Then gave it a bit of a bash. But there was no doubt about it – the lights were fading.
‘Oh dear,’ said Father Christmas. ‘Not again.’
The altitude reading had now slipped lower to ‘BELOW THE CLOUDS’. Father Christmas called to his reindeer.
‘Higher! We’re not in London yet!’
The reindeer tried their best but they didn’t seem able to rise any higher.
‘Blitzen? Are you struggling? Blitzen, if you are and finding this hard, raise your head.’
Blitzen raised his head.
Father Christmas picked up that thing called a telephone and said, ‘Hello.’
And a worried voice came back. ‘Hello.’
It was Father Topo.
‘Oh, hello, Father Topo. I was just checking that nothing is wrong in Elfhelm.’
Father Topo cleared his throat on the other end of the line. ‘Wrong? No. No. Everything is quite all right. Why do you ask?’
‘I’m just having a bit of a problem with the reindeer. We don’t seem to be able to fly high enough in the sky. And the Barometer of Hope is looking a bit, erm, unhopeful.’ Father Christmas knew that if hope levels were down it meant one of two things: trouble in the human world or trouble back in Elfhelm. Or both.
Father Topo coughed uncertainly. ‘Everything is fine, Father Christmas. You just carry on your way.’
And Father Christmas saw the dim lights of London up ahead.
‘All right, Father Topo,’ Father Christmas said as the sleigh lowered.
And Father Topo said, ‘Just be careful out there.’
Father Christmas looked over the side of his sleigh. He had forgotten how big London was – all those moonlit buildings and churches that seemed to go on for ever with the River Thames snaking through the middle. Then his stomach felt light and tickly, and he saw the reindeer struggling again.
‘We’re not at Haberdashery Road yet!’
He saw Blitzen turn around and give Father Christmas a desperate look.
‘Oh, my deers! Come on! You can do it! Stay in the air!’
He looked at the altitude reading. It said ‘WORRYINGLY LOW BUT YOU SHOULD BE ALL RIGHT’. And then seconds later it said ‘NO, ACTUALLY, THIS IS TOO LOW YOU’D BETTER PANIC’.
Father Christmas looked for somewhere to land. It had to be somewhere close. And it had to be somewhere flat and large and out of view. Ideally a roof. But what roof would be big enough?
And then he saw it.
The largest house ever.
It had a hundred windows, all tall and neat like soldiers standing to attention. Actually, now you mention it, there were real soldiers standing outside the gates, wearing tall black furry bearskin hats. It was so large. It was larger than the Toy Workshop. It was larger than any building in the whole of Finland. It was perfect.
‘All right, reindeer,’ he shouted, ‘we’re coming in to land. Donner, Blitzen, you see that roof? That’s where we’re headed. The rest of you, don’t slow till we get there.’
But they were slowing. And the sleigh was tilting too. And then he noticed something. The tall-hatted soldiers weren’t standing to attention now. They were aiming their guns at the sleigh.