Farthest North

5

Farthest North

    ’Twas the night before the night before Christmas, or, sheer, unadulterated Hell. Bob mooched morosely into the sitting-room, where his brother-in-law was discovered with, yet again, his bloody mobile phone glued to his ear. On a Sunday? Godfather! Apparently New York never slept. It certainly never slept in on a Sunday morning, that was for sure. He’d rung somebody over there at, no kidding, six-thirty their time. One couldn’t even hope he’d lose the bloody thing, like he, Bob, was always doing with the one Jessica had foisted on him, because when it wasn’t glued to his ear, it was welded to his hip. ’Cos see, it wasn’t Superglue after all!

    He proved this by bidding the luckless bod at the other end a brisk good-bye, removing the object from the hearing organ, and replacing it in the stupid little pouch thing which lived permanently on his belt. Yes, even when he was wearing jeans, like now. Not that they hardly fell within the human definition of “jeans”, they were so dark navy, superbly cut and pristinely unwrinkled. Bob had a feeling he’d seen Tom Cruise on the telly in a pair just like them. Just like them. Down to the last stud on the last little loop that you had to thread the strip of skin from an endangered species through, and the last brass button on the fly—oh, yes. You bet.

    “Look, Ben, since you’re not busy,” he said very, very pointedly to him, “you can get Damian on out of it, he’s in the kitchen again, driving his mother mad.”

    Ben looked down his nose. “Why can’t you get him on out of it?”

    “Because she’s ordered me to chop stuff!” he snarled.

    Ben winced. “Okay, goddit. Um, where should I take him, though, Bob? It’s real cold out.”

    Well, yes, it was pretty nippy, but it wasn’t blowing a blizzard out there, in fact the wind had dropped quite noticeably, a brisk walk would not be out of the question. For anyone but a pampered American. Bob sighed. “Dunno. Well, um, inflict him on the Princes? –You could see Isabella!” he added with supreme untact.

    Ben reddened. Bob knew perfectly well he’d been reconsidering that. Well, she was delightful, but very young, and he was very nearly almost engaged to Tracy, after all.

    “And I’m warning you now, tomorrow will be even worse. Not only will there be last minute Christmas food shopping to do—don’t tell me it all comes from the supermarket anyway, thanks!—there’ll be all the Christmas Eve baking and stuff to do as well.”

    “Uh—well, doesn't she usually bake the pies on Christmas Day?” he said dazedly.

    Poor sap, thought Bob, suddenly feeling immensely superior. Didn’t know a thing, really, did he? –Jesus, what must life with that Tracy creature be like? They had already been told that Tracy didn’t “do Christmas” but now it was actually starting to sink in.

    “This is married life, old man,” he said kindly. “They do the big cooking on the day itself, of course, no way would you just heat up a pie in the oven that you’d cooked yesterday—um, that syntax went a bit wonky, but you know what I mean. Likewise roast potatoes and stuff. And gravy. But on Christmas Eve you do other stuff. Starters, puddings—Damian doesn’t like the traditional English Christmas fruit pudding and as a matter of fact nor does she,” he admitted, grinning. “She pretends he’s still too little for it, so just mind you keep your lip buttoned, okay?”

    Ben nodded dazedly. “Okay.”

    “And today it’s mince pies—wait for it,” he warned.

    Ben sighed, but waited.

    “And gingerbread men. She’s made two batches of those already. They have to cool down before you put the icing on, she reckons your mum used to do them—”

    “Oh! For the tree! Yes, she di—uh—” He looked in dismay at the giant bare tree that was now dominating the room.

    This same tree had very lately scratched the roof of Bob’s car to blazes. Not to mention what it had done to Bob’s hands, he still couldn’t get the sap off, it had gone black but it still wouldn’t come off and it was probably oozing into the scratches and giving him blood poisoning. That or acting as a disinfectant, one or the other. Bob picked at the sticking plaster on the strength of it. Itching like buggery! “Yes, and before you start, the next step, well, not literally the next but following as night the day, kind of thing, will be stringing things that no needle was ever meant to penetrate on little bits of cotton that are absolutely bound to break, not necessarily before they’ve wound themselves up in knots.”

    “Popcorn,” diagnosed Ben heavily.

    “Them as well, old chum. Plus and she’s making jellies. Uh—might be Jell-O, to you. Damian likes the muck. He was going on about some green thing, can't remember where he had it, might’ve been the Winterses’ place. They can go in the fridge and chill, they’ll be one less worry for tomorrow: get it?”

    Ben nodded palely.

    “So get in there, try not to get under her skin—not speaking’d be the go,” he noted thoughtfully—“and get him out from under!”

    Not saying he’d planned to make three more calls, Ben went.

    Bob sighed and wandered over to the Johnnie. Er—no. She’d smell it on his breath. And that thing about vodka not having a smell was a myth, he’d proved that empirically. Um... He went to the loo. He didn’t actually need to, but no-one could be blamed for that, could they? Well, they could, but it—hah, hah—wouldn’t hold water.

    Then he went meekly back into the kitchen, let her do her nut, said meekly that he’d only been for a pee, and don’t worry, he’d washed his hands very thoroughly in loads of hot water, and, sitting down at the kitchen table, got on with it. Oh, this muck was for a fancy ice cream, was it? Let’s hope Ben and Isabella both liked ice cream with little bits of hard, frozen muck in it, because he personally loathed it and so did Damian. He chopped nuts, candied peel and glacé cherries very, very—Not that small!—Quite finely. At least it came but once a year. And with any luck they wouldn’t have any visitors next year and she wouldn’t feel the need to pull all the stops out. Well, some of the stops, yeah. But not the full diapason.

    The Prince family in toto was discovered with shining morning faces, putting their coats, hats and mufflers on, Hell!

    “We’re going to the North Pole!” piped little Petunia, jumping.

    It was about that cold out there, yeah. “Gee, that's nice, Petunia, honey,” said Ben weakly

    “Ooh, can we come?” cried Damian. “I wanna see old King Cold!”

    “Uh—he’s got mixed up,” said Ben feebly to the smiling Dan and Margot. “We were reading this book of nursery rhymes he’s got, you see. –Old King Cole, Damian.”

    “No!” he cried, collapsing in giggles. “Not him, Uncle Ben, he’s only in a book!”

    “That’s right,” agreed Dan amiably. “Well, you’ve got your warm coats on—why not?”

    “But Dan—” cried his wife.

    Too late, Dan was whisking them all up, up and—

    Ben stared round him in bewilderment. What the Hell? This wasn’t the Heath. And how on earth did they get here?

    Isabella came up to his side with a giggle. “We flew, Ben!”

    Ben looked at her limply. Yeah, flew. They had not taken a plane! And for another thing, he’d been under the impression—no, he’d been sure—that she was wearing her soft blue winter coat. She was in a blue coat, yeah. It was the same shade, he guessed. But it had a huge hood lined with sparkling white fur—must be artificial, nylon or some such, it was literally sparkling—and with more of the fur on the cuffs and hem. And within the enchanting frame of fluffiest white, she was wearing a pair of sparkling earrings, and he hadn't thought she was wearing any at all. These looked like real diamonds. Sparkling like crazy.

    “Not sparkling, twinkling!” said Isabella with another giggle, taking his arm and hugging it. Ooh—warm!

    Nodding, Honeysuckle recited:

 “Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

Now I know just what you are,

I’ll hang you from my ears so fair,

Try and grab them if you dare.”

     What? They were all crazy, that was what! Or maybe he was dreaming—yeah, the whole thing must be a dream, he must have dozed off in Jessica and Bob’s sitting-room, uh, before Bob came in and ordered him to get Damian out of it? Yes, must be. He remembered making that call to Fred Reinhard, very clearly, but—uh, yeah. Must be dreaming.

    “You’re not dreaming, Ben!” said Isabella gaily. “This is the Realm of Snow, and we’re going to the North Pole, to see Old King Cold!”

    Dreaming. That was just the sort of thing dream figures did say. Must be something to do with that book of nursery rhymes Damian had persuaded him to read him last night. And all this snow: well, Jessica’s house was filled with Christmas cards with pictures of snow on them, and then, hadn’t she been going on about the Princes going to Norway to the snow to see that ice hotel or some such? Right. One of those crazy dreams that picked up garbage from your subconscious you’d never even noticed yourself noticing. He wouldn’t mention it to Tracy, she’d be sure to put the worst sort of Freudian interpretation on it. Though how you could interpret snow and garbage about old King Cole, or Cold, whatever, as Freudian... But there was no doubt Tracy could. That or Jungian, she was into him lately, as well.

    ... Images of cold would probably be one more indication of his crippled emotional state, come to think of it. Yeah, definitely: of his inability to commit. There was a long gap between lack of enthusiasm and snow as far as the eye could see, but— Yes. Inability to commit fully. That sort of garbage. His Parent dominating his Child. Or vice versa, maybe.

    “We’re going to the North Pole, to see Old King Cold, Uncle Ben!” echoed Damian excitedly.

    Okay, he’d humour the kid: couldn’t make any difference in a dream, could it? “Yeah, sure we are. How are we gonna get there?”

    Damian looked hopefully up at Dan. Shit, the guy was wearing wings! They looked real silly—real silly—with that green windcheater of his. Likewise with the Christmas Fairisle scarf round his neck. This was one of the silliest dreams he’d ever—

    “You’re not dreaming, Ben!” said Dan with his warm chuckle.—How come every time that guy spoke he, Ben Anderson, sane New Yorker, got visions of mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows floating in them, plus and, the smell of cinnamon toast?—“We’re going by reindeer sleigh, of course!”

    Right. Of course. When you go to the North Pole you take a reindeer sleigh. Naturally.

    Damian and the little Prince girls were jumping and crying: “Hurray! Reindeer!” Shit, now the littlest girl had sprouted wings, as well! That crap of Damian’s sure had gotten to him—not to mention that stuff he’d read to Damian, no wonder the kid was convinced there really were such things as fairies, his bookshelves were crammed with crap, largely English crap, full of fairies and elves and Billy Goats Gruff with trolls—uh, maybe that one wasn’t English, same difference. About the sanest thing he owned was that Thomas the Tank Engine thing, and when you came to think about it rationally, steam engines did not speak.

    “Here they come!” cried Isabella, squeezing his arm. And here they were, it was a dream all right, reindeer could not move that fast in real life. Or fly. There were two sleighs. Dan jovially lifted the driver—an elf, right: pointed ears—into the back of one and took the reins himself.

    Margot herded her children into it, tutting anxiously about wings that were getting in the way—okay, just what a mother would tut anxiously over if you were dreaming that her kid had wings. The second one was for Ben, Damian and Isabella. The driver was an elf, again. They sat in back, it was that design of sleigh. Strangely familiar... Not Tim Allen, he didn’t think. Uh... oh, yes, those brochures Tracy had had about skiing in the Austrian alps. Only those had been horses with bells and tassels dangling off of their harness, not reindeer with ditto. And tinsel, yes, Damian: that was definitely tinsel. They had two reindeer each, which in a way was logical, because a sleigh with just a few people in it would not be nearly as heavy as Santa’s sleigh with him and all the presents, would it?

    “These are Reinhard and Romper; the Christmas sleigh reindeer are being rested before their big night,” said Isabella with her ravishing smile.

    Ben found he was smiling back, as the reindeer jogged off over the snow, their bells tinkling gently. “Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way...” Well, it was a good dream, she was as lovely as ever! Though at the same time he was thinking: Yes, he had just put in a call to Fred Reinhard, so there you were. Typical of what dreams did.

    “Yay!” cried Damian, standing up. “On, Reinhard! On, Romper!”

    Isabella gasped and grabbed his coat. “Careful, Damian!”

    And Damian collapsed back into his seat with a startled squeak as Reinhard and Romper took off, in the frosty air!

    It took longer than Ben had imagined, and he began to worry that Damian would be cold. But no: “You’re always warm with Isabella, Uncle Ben!” he reminded him.

    He was certainly very warm himself. Toasty toes, again. “Uh, well, just speak up if you start to feel cold, Damian,” he said lamely, recollecting too late that this was only a dream.

    “It’s all right, Ben, fairies always keep you warm!” chirped their elf driver. His name was Elvis, so there you were. Elvis Elf. Mm-hm.

    Just when Ben was starting to feel as if he’d had enough—well, if it had been him and Isabella alone in a sleigh— But with Damian there, not to mention that every time he tried to chat to her Elvis Elf joined in—just when he was getting quite hot under the collar and Isabella, smiling, had loosened his muffler for him, Damian cried: “Look! The North Pole!”

    Very naturally it was the barber’s pole straight out of that Tim Allen— Uh, not quite. As they landed in a swirl of snowflakes just beside it, Ben realised that this, though it had red and white stripes going round and round, was actually a giant candy cane. It was topped with a glowing, rotating sort of something.

    “That’s the Top, Uncle Ben!” cried Damian. “’Cos Santa has to cover the whole world, from Top to Toe, to deliver the presents!”

    “The Toe’s at the South Pole. Blue, quite pretty for a toe,” conceded Elvis.

    Ben took a deep breath. “I see.” He could now see it was a giant spinning top, yes.

    “Just wait here,” advised Isabella. “They’re coming!”

    And the other sleigh swirled down beside them. Okay, Ronny was now wearing wings, too. He wasn’t wearing his woollen hat but this scarcely mattered, because he now had a fur-lined hood like his aunt’s. Plenty big enough to allow you to see that he was also wearing a small gold coronet. The bigger girl wasn’t in wings—yet—but they both now had hoods and coronets, well, there you were.

    Honeysuckle’s pale oatmeal coat looked—well, more of a honeysuckle shade, hah, hah—and Petunia’s bright pink one looked much pinker but probably that was the effect of the clear air or.... Ben looked at Margot but she hadn’t changed.

    “She wouldn’t, silly, she’s a mortal!” said Isabella with a giggle, hugging his arm again. Ben sighed deeply. Bliss! He’d be quite content to spend the rest of his life in a sleigh alone with Isabella, no extraneous elves need apply, with her smiling and hugging his arm like that, forever...

    “Um, what, Damian?” he said groggily. “Oh: hullo, Ronny,” he said, realising the boy had come over to them. “Your feet aren’t getting cold in the snow, are they?”

    “No, my toes are always toasty!” he said with a laugh that was, if of course in a much higher tone, very like his father’s.

    “Uh—yeah. You better get in the sleigh, all the same.”

    Ronny clambered in beside them. “You have to wait for the Gatekeeper, now,” he explained.

    “What are your reindeer called?” asked Damian eagerly.

    Okay, they were Tempura and Tinsel and yeah, a couple of nights back Ben had taken Jessica and Bob to a Japanese restaurant. Bob, to his surprise, had really enjoyed it. Their elf driver was called Elva, was he, Ronny? Whatever.

    “Here’s the Gatekeeper!” cried Ronny.

    No, those were the Northern Li— Oh, yes. So he was. Impressive. Pointed ears, but taller than the driver elves. Put you in mind strongly of Mr Spock, actually. Though the robe was stylistically closer to that thing Spock’s father had worn. The Next Generation, that had been, when Picard and he did the mind-meld. This robe, however, was a very bright metallic red trimmed with a very bright metallic green. The pointed hat was also green. Very shiny. The two tall fairies in sparkling ballet dresses with large diadems on their heads, flanking him, were also quite impressive.

    “Hullo, Gatekeeper!” cried Isabella, standing up and waving to him.

    He came over to them, giant star-topped staff, ballet fairy escorts and all. “Princess Isabella, my dear! How lovely to see you! We weren’t expecting you till Christmas Eve!”

    “We just thought we’d pop up to see how the preparations are going.”

    “Oh, very well, very well!” he beamed. He didn’t look old, he had very red, round, unwrinkled cheeks, but he had the manner of an elderly man. “Santa’s very pleased indeed. The elves are all working very hard, I’m glad to say, and the ice fairies are all behaving themselves.”

    “Of course we are!” tinkled the two accompanying him and Ben jumped, it was like listening to wind chimes!

    “Of course you are, Ice Fairy Izzie and Ice Fairy Crystal!” cried Isabella warmly.

    “Ice fairies,” said Damian in awe, goggling at them. They were worth goggling at: better than anything Ben had ever seen at the Met. Their skins very pale, sort of just frosted very lightly with, well, looked like ice, yes; sparkling pointed shoes, they seemed to be standing on their toes—no, hovering with their toes about two inches above the snow, actually—the gauzy opalescent wings continually sparkling and quivering. Ice Fairy Izzie had what looked like a row of diamonds all down each bare arm and Ice Fairy Crystal’s arms and legs were covered with a network of opalescent lace. Or possibly crystals? The eyebrows of both were outlined with tiny sparkling drops, he was almost sure he'd seen that effect in a production of Ondine. Oh, yes: Tracy had said the whole production was expectable, especially the sets and costumes, and she’d have thought better of that company.

    “Yes, Damian, these are my ice fairies,” agreed the Gatekeeper. “Hop out and take Ice Fairy Izzie’s hand, deary, and they’ll take you to see Old King Cold.”

    “Eh?” said Ben in Isabella’s ear as the little boy clambered out eagerly. “What about Santa Claus?”

    “You’ll see!” she said with a gurgle. “Come on. Take my hand!”

    Evidently that was what you did. Well, Ronny had now taken Ice Fairy Crystal’s, and the Gatekeeper was nodding encouragingly, so Ben got out of the sleigh—ow, wow, cold snow! And took Isabella’s hand. Ooh, that was better, his toes weren’t cold after all! These boots must be okay, then. Well, they’d cost enough, and they were Tracy-selected. But since coming to England he’d had a distinct feeling that the darn things were starting to leak.

    “Now wha—” he began, but suddenly there was a great whirlwind of ice and snow surrounding them—no, ice cream and snow—no, ice cream and sno-cone, raspberry-scented—and WHOOMPH! They were all standing in a large, lofty-ceilinged, uh, ice palace?

    Ben shook his head dazedly and licked icy flakes off his lips. It was raspberry, all right.

    “And now,” beamed Ice Fairy Crystal, tittuping on her toes—no, whoops, hovering a foot above the icy white floor, “let’s all go and see Old King Cold! He’s in the throne room: come on, dearies!” She flew off eagerly, Ronny and his little sisters rushing after her—no, they were flying, too; only about eighteen inches or so above the floor, but definitely flying.

    “See?” cried Damian. “They’re all fairies!”

    “Hold tight to my hand, Damian, dear, and we’ll fly, too!” cried Ice Fairy Izzie. And she rose into the air with him, hand-in-hand.

    “Look at me, Uncle Ben!” he cried. “I’m flying!”

    “Be careful, Damian! –Will he be okay?” he asked Isabella.

    “Of course! Just hold tight to a fairy’s hand, or if there’s more of you, it’s:

“Every child must hold hands tight,

Thus you’ll rise into the night;

Do not fear or be a-fright,

Then come home all right and tight!”

    She laughed happily. “But if you are frightened, Ben, we’ll walk: it’s just down the hall.”

    Ben looked at her limply. Now she’d sprouted wings, too! Glorious blue gauzy ones, shimmering with opalescent shades of lilac and pink. “I’m not frightened, it’s just—”

    Laughing, Isabella rose into the air with him. Oh, boy, what would Tracy say about this: wasn’t dreaming you were flying the classic Freudian something or other? Hell, who cared, this was fun, he might as well enjoy the sensation! Whoo-ooo! Whee-eee-eee!

    “Fun!” he gasped as they landed. About thirty feet down the hallway; still, it really had been flying, as Damian was now assuring him. They’d all flown, even Margot. But hadn’t Isabella said she was a mortal? Well, dreams were full of strange contradictions—

    “No, she was holding Dan’s hand!” said Isabella gaily.

    “Yes, of course she was,” Ben agreed limply. “Uh—the Gatekeeper isn’t coming?” he realised, looking about him.

    “No, his job is to be Gatekeeper,” she replied seriously. “This is the throne room.”

    It certainly said “Throne Room”, yes, in elaborate gold lettering, Gothick-style, above a huge gold and silver door. Should they knock? Apparently not: Ice Fairy Izzie cried loudly: “Open, sesame seed!”

    Ben shook his head dazedly. She couldn’t have said “Open, sesame seed,” that was ridiculous! He defied anyone to claim that he could dream anything that silly!

    “You always say ‘Open, sesame seed’ to open a heavy door in Fairyland, Ben,” murmured Isabella.

    Right. Of course you did. It was axiomatic, really.

    Slowly the big door swung open, and there he was at the far end of the big room, sitting on his big gold throne, on a red-carpeted dais, under a bower of holly and ivy, both well grown, liberally decorated with baubles. He had a big white beard and a gold crown, and he was wearing a red velvet suit, liberally trimmed with fluffy while fur.

    “Old King Cold! Hurray!” shouted Damian. He rushed up to him, crying: “Hullo, Santa! Hullo, Santa! Can I sit on your knee?”

    Ben’s jaw dropped. “He can’t be both,” he croaked.

    “Of course he can: he is,” said Isabella simply. “Santa rules the Realm of Snow, that’s why he's Old King Cold. It’s logical, isn’t it?”

    Uh... yes, actually, it was. Axiomatic, even. The ruler of the realm of snow would be King Cold, yes, and this jolly-looking gent with the fluffy white beard and the very red cheeks was certainly old. And that was a Santa suit, all right.

    “I told you I studied logic!” said Isabella sunnily, hugging his arm.

    Damian was now ensconced on Santa’s, or possibly His Majesty’s, knee, presumably confiding what he wanted for Christmas—oh, shit, though Jessica and Bob had already bought his presents, he, Ben, had signally failed to get that train set over, in spite of several calls to Tom.

    “Have you got a train set you want to give him?” whispered Isabella.

    Ben made a face. “Yes: it’s back home in New York—I think. Well, it should be in a box in back of my closet, but if Tracy’s had a tidying fit, she’ll have thrown it out.”

    “Yes, like your lovely videos of the man who was Scrooge,” she said kindly.

    “Uh— Oh! Have you been watching Patrick Stewart in A Christmas Carol? –It’s good, isn’t it?” he said as she nodded. “Jessica sent me a copy, she was sure we wouldn’t get anything as good Stateside. Well, Bill Murray in Scrooged was a riot—she threw that one out, too,” he noted sourly. “I’ve seen a musical version, that was real bad, and several other versions I couldn’t sit through—think one might’ve been a cartoon. Nothing came close.”

    “Margot loves it, too. We could fly over and look in your closet, Ben.”

    “Yuh—um, he may not want it,” he admitted.

    “Well, he's asking Santa for a train right now,” she murmured.

    “Really? Gee, if we could fly over—if this wasn’t a dream—and if it wasn’t too far for you!”

    “It would be quite tiring in the mortal realm. But from here, we could go by sleigh, and it’d be quite quick!”

    Santa Claus was now laughing merrily. He was a jolly old soul, all right. Made all the screen Santas Ben had ever seen look like grumpy old men! You couldn't have transcribed that laugh as a “Ho, ho, ho,” and it wasn’t a “Hah, hah, hah”, either. It was a real, genuine, jolly laugh. Made you want to laugh yourself, in fact Ben found he was grinning foolishly.

    “Yeah, let’s take a reindeer sleigh to New York!” he agreed.

    “Have lunch before you go, Ben!” boomed Santa Claus. “But first, come here and tell me what you want for Christmas!”

    Gee, what he wanted for Christmas was for this not to be a dream and to be able to spend the rest of his life with lovely, smiling Isabella.

    “I can grant it if you really want it!” chuckled the fat old man.

    Ben came up to him slowly. “Um, you kids can go first,” he said feebly to the Prince kids. What on earth was Santa holding? He’d been fiddling with it when they came in.

    “It’s his pipe,” said Honeysuckle, reciting the rhyme:

“Old King Cold was a Merrie old soul,

And a Merrie old soul was He;

He call’d for his Pipe, and he call’d for his Coal,

And he call’d for his Faeries, Three!”

    “No, um, isn’t it ‘called for his bowl’, Honeysuckle?”

    “No: watch!”

    Sure enough, Santa Claus now tapped the pipe briskly on the arm of the throne, filled it with tobacco from a pouch produced from the pocket of his capacious red velvet pants, tamped it down with his thumb, and called: “Bring me a coal, my Fairies, three!”

    And three fairies and an extraneous elf who had been lounging by the big fireplace at the far side of the room on a rickety-looking gilded sofa laden with billowy cushions sprang to their feet and, retrieving a hot coal carefully from the glowing embers, brought it over to him in pair of long silver tongs. Two of the fairies supporting the tongs, with a certain amount of hindrance from the elf, and the other one just fluttering above them.

    And Old King Cold duly lit his pipe.

    Gee, that was logical, too. If you had your pipe, why would be you be calling for a bowl?

    The three little Princes then had to sit on the old man’s knee and whisper into his ear. Ben glanced warily at their parents but they were just smiling happily. Well, okay, in a dream your parents let you ask Santa for whatever you fancied, and on Christmas Day it’d be there.

    Honeysuckle had had her turn: she returned to his side and took his hand. “One little Prince and two little Princesses,” she corrected solemnly.

    Ooh, warm! Okay, he seized the logic of that one. “Yes, I see, honey.”

    “Last Christmas Ronny wanted a unicorn,” she confided, “but Dad said it wouldn't be sensible, the mortals would all stare and maybe come and take it away to study and cut it up to look at its insides.”

    Uh-huh. Not so different in Fairyland, after all. “So what did he ask for instead?”

    “A Harry Potter book. The magic’s all wrong, of course, but they’re good stories.”

    “That’s right, all the kids like them,” he agreed. “And did he get it?”

    She laughed, sounding very like her aunty. “Yes, ’course!”

    Ronny scrambled off Santa’s knee and it was Ben’s turn. Even in a dream he felt like a complete idiot.

    “Come along, Ben, my dear!” the old man beamed, patting the knee.

    Resignedly Ben perched on his knee. If the laws of this dream wanted him to, presumably he’d better do it.

    “You can tell me,” said Santa kindly. “They can’t hear us.”

    Uh—maybe not, no: Ben certainly couldn’t hear them, though he could see the children were all chattering and laughing, and so were the three fairies and the elf.

    “The trouble with elves is,” said the old man, shaking his whiskery head, but not frowning—gee, he had no frown lines at all!—“they have very short attention spans.”

    “Um—yes. I think the elf who met us said they were all working hard at the Christmas preparations, though?”

    “The Gatekeeper. Mm. He’s not an elf, Ben, he’s a fairy, but they’re all predisposed in one another’s favour. Two branches of the same line, you see,” he explained.

    Ben nodded. “I get it.”

    “Added to which, they’re incurably optimistic!” he said with a rumbling laugh. “Well, well, we’ll get there in the end! Now, tell me what you want for Christmas!”

    Suddenly Ben was surrounded by the most glorious scent of hot mince pies! Groggily he registered that the smell of Jessica’s baking must be filtering through to him in his sleep.

    “Okay,” he said meekly. He approached his face to the old man’s ear—the scent of warm mince pies getting stronger, you could actually smell the brandy in them—and murmured: “What I want for Christmas is to be able to spend the rest of my life with Isabella.”

    “I can give you that, if you’re sure?”

    “Sure I’m sure, but this is a dream, and I’ve got to go back to New York and being told what’s what by Tracy for my own good!”

    “Okay, it’s done, but it’s up to you to make it work, Ben,” he said kindly.

    Sounded just like Dad promising him that bike if he worked for it. “I’ll do my best,” he said heavily. –Well, what else was there to say?

    “Good. Now, lunch! –Lunchtime, everyone!” he boomed.

    To get to the dining-room you apparently had to go through the workshop, or maybe Santa just wanted to check on the elves. It was like all of Santa’s workshops you’d ever seen or read about rolled into one. Brightly coloured, gilded conveyor belts going hither and yon, the sound of tap, tap, tapping, toys coming off of the belts at a steady rate, dolls, model airplanes, robots—uh, okay, robots—teddy bears, toy trucks, sets of blocks, beach balls—you name it, they were all there. Nintendo, yet. Ben picked one up. Well, “Intendo” was what it said. Close enough. Be because it was intended.

    “Yes, of course!” Dan agreed. “They're intended for the kids whose parents can't afford Nintendo, we wouldn’t want to put any mortals out of work.”

    No, right. Very laudable.

    He’d expected lunch to be high in sugar content, but although there were shakes for the kids, what they got to eat were hotdogs and hamburgers. Which were greeted by the kids with cries of approval. There were also fries and salad: Dan just ate these, but the other visitors gave in and had hamburgers or hotdogs. And Santa had both. The two Ice Fairies only had fries and salad, with shakes, but the crowd of elves who’d joined them—about a quarter of the workforce, they must lunch in shifts—tucked in to the hotdogs and hamburgers as eagerly as the kids.

    Had they eaten lunch in any of those Tim Allen things? Ben didn’t think so. So where was this coming from? Couldn’t be his deprived childhood, Dad had always bought hotdogs when they went to a game, and they’d eaten out at McDonald’s every couple of weeks, and at Mom’s favourite family restaurant every other week. Well, most likely it was a reaction to—in fact subconscious defiance of—Tracy’s absolutely forbidding him to eat anything from a street stall—or at the ball game, Ben!—or to go near anything composed of scraped Argentinean beef bones. He hadn’t asked her where she’d got that one from, he’d just recognised glumly that hamburgers were a no-no. Yes, Tracy, they were bad for your cholesterol level. But gee, would say, one a month have hurt?

    Tim Allen or not, he was sort of expecting to see a Head Elf in a kind of Holbeinesque hat. Bernard, that was it! He’d been very good. Better than what he was in that boring Numbers thing. Well, not his fault, the whole concept was dumb. “Which is the Head Elf?” he whispered to Isabella.

    “Over there.” She nodded and smiled at a largeish elf—large for an elf—in an embroidered green suit, a pink hat, and pink tights. “Elan.”

    Ben’s mouth tightened. The embroidery on the elf’s suit was pink. Pink lotuses.

    “Lotus Elan, yes,” she said sunnily. “He chose it, he thought it was pretty. If I come over from the Fairy Realm I often bring him a lotus flower. –It is logical.”

    “Crazy, more like,” he muttered, staring at Lotus Elan Elf.

    “Fairy logic is, a bit!” said Isabella, squeezing his arm.

    Ben sighed, pretty much gave in, and kind of leaned against her... Warm. Lovely. Okay, if this was a dream it could go on forever!

Next chapter:

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