‘Good morning, Father Christmas,’ shouted one elf, called Dimple, with a cheery smile. Dimple’s name was easy to remember because she had dimples in her cheeks whenever she smiled, which was always. She was sitting next to Bella, the joke writer, who was working on her last joke of the year and chuckling to herself as she ate a mince pie.
Dimple offered Father Christmas a peppermint and when he opened the lid of the peppermint jar a toy snake popped out. ‘Aaagh!’ said Father Christmas.
Dimple was now on the floor in hysterics.
‘Ho ho ho,’ said Father Christmas, and tried to mean it. ‘How many of them do we have?’
‘Seventy-eight thousand six hundred and forty-seven.’
‘Very good.’
And then the Sleigh Belles saw him across the room and instantly changed their song to ‘Hero In The Red Coat’ which was a tribute to Father Christmas. It wasn’t the Sleigh Belles’ best song, but all the elves started singing.
‘There’s a man who’s dressed in red,
With gifts for those asleep in bed.
A tall man with a snow-white beard,
Whose ears are round and rather weird.
He showed us elves that there’s a way,
To make life as happy as Christmas Day.
He and his reindeer travel the world,
Giving presents to every boy and girl.
As all their hopes and dreams take float,
We all like to thank . . .
(Is it a goat?)
No!
It’s THE HERO IN THE RED COAT!’
As the elves cheered, Father Christmas was a bit embarrassed and didn’t know where to look, so he looked out of a window. He saw someone outside running across the snow towards the workhouse. No one else had noticed, as no one else was tall enough to see out of the window.
It wasn’t an elf, Father Christmas knew that. It was even smaller. Too light. Too graceful. Too stylish. Too yellow. Too fast.
And then, realising who exactly it was, he left the workshop.
‘Back in a moment, you wonderful folk,’ he told the elves, as the music lulled. ‘And the infinity sack is there so you can start dropping toys in it . . .’
By the time Father Christmas opened the door, she was there, hands on her little hips, bent double, breathless.
‘Truth Pixie!’ he said, happy to see her. After all, it wasn’t often a pixie entered Elfhelm. ‘Happy Christmas!’
The Truth Pixie’s eyes, which were always huge, were even wider than they were normally.
‘No,’ she said, staring up at Father Christmas, from the height of his knees.
‘What?’
‘No. It’s not a happy Christmas.’
The Truth Pixie stared inside the Toy Workshop and saw all the elves and felt a bit itchy, because she didn’t like elves very much, and they gave her a bit of a rash.
‘I’ve got a new suit,’ said Father Christmas. ‘It’s even redder than it was before. And look at this fur trim. Do you like it?’
The Truth Pixie shook her head. She didn’t mean to be rude, but she had to tell the truth. ‘No. I don’t like it at all. You look like a giant mouldy cloudberry. But that’s not the point.’
‘What is the point? You’re hardly ever in Elfhelm.’
‘That is because it is full of elves.’
Some of the elves had seen the Truth Pixie.
‘Merry Christmas, Truth Pixie!’
‘Idiots,’ mumbled the Truth Pixie.
Father Christmas sighed. He stepped outside onto the snow and closed the door behind him. ‘Listen, Truth Pixie, I would love to stay and chat, but it is Christmas Eve. I need to go and help get everything ready . . .’
Father Christmas noticed she was looking quite scared. He had never seen the Truth Pixie look scared before.
‘You need to forget about the Toy Workshop. You need to forget about Christmas. You need to get out of Elfhelm. You need to run for the hills.’
‘What are you talking about, Truth Pixie?’
And it was then that he heard it. A kind of grumbling sound.
‘I knew I should have had a bigger breakfast,’ he said, patting his stomach.
‘That wasn’t coming from you. It was coming from down there.’ The Truth Pixie pointed to the ground.
Father Christmas stared down at the fresh snow, as blank as a white page.
‘It’s happening even sooner than I thought,’ she squealed, and began running. She looked back over her shoulder. ‘Find a safe place! And hide! And I suppose you should tell the elves to hide too . . . And you better cancel Christmas before they do . . .’
‘They? Who are they?’ But the Truth Pixie had gone. Father Christmas chuckled, looking at the pixie’s tiny footprints in the snow heading back to the wooded hills. It was Christmas. The Truth Pixie had obviously been up all night drinking cinnamon syrup and was probably a bit confused.
Even so, he heard the rumbling noise again.
‘Oh, stomach, do be . . .’
But the noise was much louder and lower and suddenly not that stomachy. It was a very strange sound. He was sure it was nothing to worry about. But even so, he went back inside and quickly shut the door so he could hear nothing but the sounds of the Toy Workshop.
Mr Creeper
It was dark inside chimneys. That was the first thing she had had to get used to. The darkness. Another thing was the size. Chimneys were always a bit too small, even if you were still a child. But the worst thing about being a chimney sweep was the soot. The black dust got everywhere once you started sweeping. In your hair, on your clothes, on your skin, in your eyes and mouth. It made you cough a horrid unstoppable cough, and made your eyes water. It was a horrible job but it was a job she needed. A job that could help her earn enough money for food and to get medicine for her mother.
And anyway, the thing about sweeping chimneys was that it made you enjoy daylight more. In fact, it made you enjoy being anywhere that wasn’t a chimney. It made you hope. Being in the sooty darkness made you dream of all the exotic and light places in the world.
It was certainly no place to be on the morning of Christmas Eve. Stuck there, knees and elbows rammed against the chimney walls, choking on the clouds of soot as she brushed.
Then she heard something.
A tiny little crying sound.
Not a human sound. But something else.
A miaow.
‘Oh no,’ she said, knowing exactly who it was.
She pressed her heels against the chimney wall and felt around with her free hand in the dark until